How to include a cookiecutter template with a bdist/conda package?

Question

I am maintaining an internal python package with a number of utility functions. As part of this package, I included a project generator console_script which calls cookiecutter using a custom template that is shipped with the package. This works fine when installing the package using pip (basically, as an sdist).

I am trying to get people to use conda as much as possible, so this is inconvenient as dependencies get resolved/installed using pip , not conda . Therefore, I am creating a conda package using the python setup.py bdist_conda way that is included by the Anaconda install. This works well, afaict, for another internal package.

However, when I try to create the present package, the bdist_conda creation byte-compiles all the python files in the package, so of course (but unintended) also the template files. This leads to a syntax error, because of the jinja strings, when running python setup.py bdist_conda :

  byte-compiling build/bdist.linux-x86_64/dumb/home/bilderbuchi/anaconda3/lib/python3.5/site-packages/mypkg/project_template/{{cookiecutter.project_name_simplified}}/{{cookiecutter.project_name_simplified}}.py to {{cookiecutter.project_name_simplified}}.cpython-35.pyc
  File "/path/to/mypkg/project_template/{{cookiecutter.project_name_simplified}}/{{cookiecutter.project_name_simplified}}.py", line 4
    {%- if cookiecutter.command_line_interface == 'argparse' %}
     ^
SyntaxError: invalid syntax

I also can reproduce with a plain python setup.py bdist , so I can exclude conda from being the culprit here. I add the template files with a MANIFEST.in containing recursive-include mypkg/project_template * , and include_package_data = True in the setuptools-based setup.py .

Is there a (better) way to ship a cookiecutter template with some package? As I said, this works nicely when used with pip /sdist, but fails with bdist . Alternatively, is there a way to suppress bdist byte-compiling a given set of files?

The template cannot be placed online, which is why I want to include it in the package. I also considered placing the template, separately, elsewhere, but then users depend on that location (eg network drive) being available when they use the project generator. I looked at adding it as a zip file, but apart from this being super unconvenient from a version control point of view, apparently , users will be prompted to delete the existing (I guess unpacked to some user location) template on the next run, so I'd rather avoid that.

• Cookiecutter version: 1.6.0
• Python version: 3.5
• setuptools 38.5.1
• Operating System: Linux

Edit: I also posted this in the cookiecutter issue tracker , but didn't get any feedback so far.

Answer 1

So, after a fruitless search, I circumvent this issue by changing all my .py template files to .pytemplate . This avoids bdist/bdist_conda discovering them. I added a post_gen script that renames all the files back to .py after the project has been created from the template. Stupid workaround, but it works. :sigh:

I know that for bdist at least, compilation can be avoided by setting sys.dont_write_bytecode , but this workaround is not available for bdist_conda , see https://github.com/conda/conda-build/issues/686 .