2  Guide

2.1 Using

This template uses Copier to create a folder with relevant files for a rostools-structured workshop. We use uv to run the commands, so you’ll need to install that first. After that, creating a new workshop project folder can be done with:

uvx copier copy gh:rostools/template-workshop WORKSHOP-NAME

Where WORKSHOP-NAME is the name of the folder you want to create. This will copy the template files into that folder, and you can then edit them as needed. When you use it, it will ask you a series of questions to correctly set up the workshop folder.

This guide provides an overview of how to use this template for creating a new workshop repository. It includes instructions for using the template and post-creation tasks.

2.2 Installing

In order to use this template, you need to install a few programs:

  • Python: Required by the template tool itself (copier).
  • Git: For version control and setting up Git to track the newly created data package.
  • copier: The template tool for making new projects in a standardised and structured way.
  • uv: A tool for managing Python environments and running commands. Some post-copy steps of this template use uv.
  • just: A build management tool that helps with running common build and check tasks.

You will need to install Python and Git yourself, but the other tools can be installed using pipx—which we strongly recommend—with the following command:

pipx install copier uv rust-just

2.3 Creating a new workshop repository

You can use this template to create a new workshop repository with a standard set of files and folders, as well as all the features and configurations to make it easier to build and develop your workshop more smoothly and effectively. First, open a Terminal and move into the directory where you want to create the new workshop repository. Then run the following command:

# Copy into the current directory, which is the "."
uvx copier copy --trust gh:rostools/template-workshop .
Caution

This template runs some post-copy commands using your terminal. In order to run them, you need to use the --trust option. Review the copier.yml file, under the _tasks key to see what commands will be run after copying the template, so you can know and trust what the commands are doing. Unfortunately, this template can’t be used without the --trust option.

2.4 Applying the template to an existing workshop repository

If you want to use this template on an existing workshop repository, you can use the copy command of copier just like above to apply the template to the existing workshop repository. This will add all the template’s files and configurations to the existing workshop repository.

uvx copier copy --trust gh:rostools/template-workshop .

It will go through a series of prompts, as in the case of creating a new workshop repository, including asking if you want to overwrite existing files.

Note

To use the copy command, the workshop repository needs to be tracked by Git and in a clean state (no changes).

2.5 Applying the latest template changes

There are two ways to update an existing workshop repository with the latest changes from the template: update and recopy.

Use update to apply template updates to your project without overwriting local changes. update will compare the version of the template you used when you first copied the template with the current version of the template, and then apply the changes that are different. This also means it won’t overwrite any changes you made to files in your current workshop repository, for example, if you deleted a file that was in the template, it won’t be copied back.

Use recopy if you want to reapply the template from scratch, which will overwrite any changes you made to the files that were copied from the template. This is useful if you want to reset the workshop repository to the state of the template. For example, if you deleted a file but want it back from the template or are simply curious to see if there are any new changes that you might want to use.

In both cases, the commands are very similar and also use many of the same options as the copy command. If you want to use the same answers as given when you first copied the template, you can use the --defaults option. Then it will only prompt you for the questions that have changed since the last time you copied the template.

uvx copier update --trust --defaults
# Or
uvx copier recopy --trust --defaults

As with the copy command, the workshop repository needs to be tracked by Git and must be in a clean state (no changes) for the update and recopy commands to work.

2.6 Post-creation setup

These steps are mainly for us in rostools to set up the repository with the settings we use, but you can follow them if you want to set up your workshop in a similar way. They are also included in a message after you’ve copied the template.

After copying the template, while in the directory of the new workshop repository, run the following:

just install-precommit

This sets up the pre-commit hooks to run standard checks on your repository whenever you commit files to the history. Next, install spaid and use the following commands to run the next setup steps:

spaid_gh_create_repo_from_local -h
spaid_gh_set_repo_settings -h
spaid_gh_ruleset_basic_protect_main -h

Some configuration is needed after copying this template to a new repository, including configuration external to the repository. Some GitHub workflows require installing GitHub Apps, for greater security purposes and easier administration when managing multiple repositories. The security section in the Seedcase Project’s Guidebook provides instructions on how to set up GitHub Apps, secrets, and variables. Ideally the secrets and variables should be set up in the organization settings. The specific workflows in this template that require this additional setup are:

  • The workflow .github/workflows/release-project.yml requires the auto-release-token GitHub App as well as a creating a GitHub secret called UPDATE_VERSION_TOKEN and a variable called UPDATE_VERSION_APP_ID that has the App ID.
  • The workflow .github/workflows/add-to-project.yml requires the add-to-board-token GitHub App, along with the ADD_TO_BOARD_TOKEN secret and the ADD_TO_BOARD_APP_ID variable of the GitHub Apps’ ID.

Since the workshop websites are hosted on Netlify, you will also need to connect the GitHub repository to Netlify as well as adding a NETLIFY_AUTH_TOKEN secret to the GitHub repository (or ideally at the organization level).