You're reading the documentation for a development version. For the latest released version, please have a look at v0.6.

_images/zenodo.8370310.svg

pymetacode

A Python package helping to write and maintain Python packages.

Code that writes code – yes, that’s correct. Automating the boring stuff, one could say, or helping to focus on the creative part of programming. In any case, the idea for this package stems from experience with a couple of Python projects, and as such it is pretty opinionated, focussing on personal needs regarding structure and layout. Nevertheless, it tries to be as user-friendly as possible, coming with an intuitive command-line interface (CLI).

Want to get an idea? Here you go. Creating a new package would be a two-step process:

  1. Write a configuration file for your new package (and afterwards fill it with sensible content)

pymeta write config to mypackage_config.yaml

  1. Create the basic Python package structure for your package.

pymeta create package from mypackage_config.yaml

Once you have your package structure, you can add modules, classes, and functions to your package from within the package’s root directory at any time:

pymeta add module mymodule
pymeta add class MyClass to mymodule
pymeta add function my_function to mymodule

Sometimes, adding subpackages to your package for further structuring the code seems sensible. Same here, from within the package’s root directory:

pymeta add subpackage mysubpackage

If you ever want to add a graphical user interface (GUI) to your project, this is (now) possible as well:

pymeta add gui
pymeta add window mysubwindow
pymeta add widget mywidget
pymeta add dialog mydialog

See Use cases for more examples. And now - happy coding!

Features

A list of features:

  • Create initial package structure (directory layout, files)

  • Add subpackage, module, class, and function scaffolds to an existing project, including tests and API documentation

  • Add initial (Qt) GUI subpackage structure (directory layout, files)

  • Add (Qt) GUI window scaffolds to existing project, including tests and API documentation

  • Intuitive command-line interface (CLI)

  • Initialise git repository; automatically incrementing version number with each commit

And to make it even more convenient for users and future-proof:

  • Open source project written in Python (>= 3.7)

  • Developed fully test-driven

  • Extensive user and API documentation

Hint

Just in case you wondered: Yes, pymetacode is maintained using pymetacode itself.

Where to start

Users new to the pymetacode package should probably start at the beginning, those interested in more real-world examples may jump straight to the section explaining frequent use cases.

The API documentation is the definite source of information for developers, besides having a look at the source code.

Installation

To install the pymetacode package on your computer (sensibly within a Python virtual environment), open a terminal (activate your virtual environment), and type in the following:

pip install pymetacode

For more details, see the installation instructions.

License

This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the BSD License.