Contributing

Contributions are welcome, and they are greatly appreciated! Every little bit helps, and credit will always be given.

Report Bugs

Report bugs at https://github.com/copier-org/copier/issues.

If you are reporting a bug, please include:

• Your operating system name and version.
• Any details about your local setup that might be helpful in troubleshooting.
• Detailed steps to reproduce the bug.

Fix Bugs

Look through the GitHub issues for bugs. Anything tagged with "bug" is open to whoever wants to implement it.

Implement Features

Look through the GitHub issues for features. Anything tagged with "Feature request" is open to whoever wants to implement it.

Write Documentation

The project could always use more documentation, whether as part of the official project docs, or even on the web in blog posts, articles, and such.

Submit Feedback

The best way to send feedback is to file an issue at https://github.com/copier-org/copier/issues.

If you are proposing a feature:

• Explain in detail how it would work.
• Keep the scope as narrow as possible, to make it easier to implement.
• Remember that this is a volunteer-driven project, and that contributions are welcome. :)

Discuss

Feel free to discuss with our community through our discussions channel. Be polite!

Dev Environment Setup

The recommended way is:

1. Click on
2. Wait until the terminal that pops up is ready.
3. Accept the direnv and nix pop-ups that appear.

For local or more complex setups, continue reading.

We use some tools as part of our development workflow which you'll need to install into your host environment:

• Nix to provide a reproducible development environment.
• Direnv to load that environment automatically in your shell.

Get Started!

Ready to contribute? Here's how to set up the project for local development.

1. Fork the Copier repo on GitHub.

2. Clone your fork locally:

   git clone git@github.com:my-user/copier.git
   cd copier
   

3. Use Direnv to set up a development environment:

   # Let direnv do its magic
   direnv allow
   

   Direnv will take some time to load for the 1st time. It will download all development dependencies, including Poetry, and it will use it to create a virtualenv and install Copier with all its development dependencies too.

4. Create a branch for local development:

   git checkout -b name-of-your-bugfix-or-feature
   

   Now you can make your changes locally.

5. When you're done making changes, check that your changes pass all tests:

   poe test
   poe lint
   

6. Commit your changes and push your branch to GitHub:

   git add .
   cz commit  # use `git commit` if you prefer, but this helps
   git push origin name-of-your-bugfix-or-feature
   

7. Submit a pull request through the GitHub website.

Pull Request Guidelines

Before you submit a pull request, check that it meets these guidelines:

1. The pull request has code, it should include tests.
2. Check that all checks pass on GitHub CI.
3. If something significant changed, modify docs.

Commit message guidelines

Follow Conventional Commits standard.

We use Commitizen to handle Copier releases. This tool generates the appropriate tag based on that standard. It also writes our changelog. Changes that are included there are of type fix, feat and refactor; also BREAKING CHANGE: trailers will appear. If your change is not meaningful in the changelog, then please don't use one of those categories.

If you're a maintainer and you want to merge a PR that will produce a confusing changelog, then please squash the PR on merge, and change the commit message to make it meaningful. Remember to respect co-autorship when squashing, especially if multiple authors were involved.

Tips

To run a subset of tests:

poe test tests/the-tests-file.py

Nix binary cache

Our direnv configuration is configured to use binary caches by default.

However, to add our binary caches permanently:

nix-shell -p cachix --run 'cachix use copier && cachix use devenv'

If you use Nix Flakes, add --accept-flake-config to install our binary cache automatically.