Overview

mk-Scaffold takes a template provided as a directory structure with template-files. Templates can be located in the filesystem, or a VCS-Server (Git) like GitHub or GitLab.

It reads a settings file, also called the “questions” file, and prompts the user interactively whether or not to change the settings.

It then takes the template-files and the answers to the questions and generates an output directory structure from it.

Changes from cookiecutter

Templated material is located in a template folder and no longer a templated folder (eg: { cookiecutter.project_name })
Template configuration file is now yaml and no longer json and supports options and validators.
Input validation is done during the prompting of questions.
To avoid third party hooks, actions such a file removal on conditional is standard now.

Input

This is a directory structure for a simple scaffold project:

scaffold-something/
├── template/                     <--------- Project template
│   └── ...
├── blah.txt                      <--------- Non-templated files/dirs
│                                            go outside
│
└── scaffold.yml                  <--------- Prompts & default values

You must have:

A scaffold.yml file.
A template/ directory.

Beyond that, you can have whatever files/directories you want.

See https://gitlab.com/jlecomte/scaffold-project-template for a real-world example of this.

Input file

Input file scaffold.yml will be searched for if a directory is given as input to mk-scaffold. An exact filename can also be given as input.

Input file requires at least a questions section which lists questions to be asked to end user.

Additional fields allow type and input validation.

questions:
  - name: "author"
    schema:
      default: "Julien Lecomte"