Comparing Copier to other project generators¶
The subject of code scaffolding has been around for some time, and there are long established good projects.
Here's a simple comparison. If you find something wrong, please open a PR and fix these docs! We don't want to be biased, but it's easy that we tend to be:
Important
Although Copier was born as a code scaffolding tool, it is today a code lifecycle management tool. This makes it somehow unique. Most tools below are only scaffolders and the comparison is not complete due to that.
| Feature | Copier | Cookiecutter | Yeoman |
|---|---|---|---|
| Can template file names | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Can generate file structures in loops | Yes | No | No |
| Configuration | Single YAML file1 | Single JSON file | JS module |
| Migrations | Yes | No | No |
| Programmed in | Python | Python | NodeJS |
| Requires handwriting JSON | No | Yes | Yes |
| Requires installing templates separately | No | No | Yes |
| Requires programming | No | No | Yes, JS |
| Requires templates to have a suffix | Yes by default, configurable3 | No, not configurable | You choose |
| Task hooks | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Context hooks | Yes5 | Yes | ? |
| Template in a subfolder | Not required, but you choose | Yes, required | Yes, required |
| Template package format | Git repo2, Git bundle, folder | Git or Mercurial repo, Zip file | NPM package |
| Template updates | Yes4 | No6 | No |
| Templating engine | Jinja | Jinja | EJS |
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The file itself can include other YAML files. ↩
-
Git repo is recommended to be able to use advanced features such as template tagging and smart updates. ↩
-
A suffix is required by default. Defaults to
.jinja, but can be configured to use a different suffix, or to use none. ↩ -
Only for Git templates, because Copier uses Git tags to obtain available versions and extract smart diffs between them. ↩
-
Context hooks are provided through the
ContextHookextension. ↩