Contributions and issues are most welcome! All issues and pull requests are handled through GitHub. Also, please check for any existing issues before filing a new one. If you have a great idea but it involves big changes, please file a ticket before making a pull request! We want to make sure you don't spend your time coding something that might not fit the scope of the project.

Github also offers discussions as a place to ask questions and share ideas. If your issue is open ended and it is not obvious when it can be "closed", please raise it as a discussion instead.

This template is a place to pull together agreed best practices from various sources. As such, it is difficult to demonstrate a change without seeing it in action in another repo. Please link to a repo that has the desired behaviour when proposing changes to the template.

The template has tests for:

• Generating a new project from scratch
• Updating the example project
• Checking that both of the above produce the same results

However, this does not test whether processes like CI and docs work correctly. You can ensure that these are checked by:

• Making your changes on a branch of https://github.com/DiamondLightSource/python-copier-template
• Running copier update --vcs-ref=<branch_name> in the repo where you would like to demonstrate the behaviour
• Linking to that demonstration repo in the PR

It is recommended that developers use a vscode devcontainer. This repository contains configuration to set up a containerized development environment that suits its own needs.

For more information on common tasks like setting up a developer environment, running the tests, and setting a pre-commit hook, see the How-to guides

When making changes to the catalog-info.yaml file, a release must be made. The Backstage Developer Portal produces its UI for the template using this file from the main branch whereas copier takes the template from the latest tag. Therefore, any differences between the copier variables could cause a breaking change so a release should be made as soon as possible.