Scold

About

This is Scold (name comes from sc(aff)old) and it handles code generation of types of code objects in your project, similar to what is seen in frameworks like Django or Laravel, but generalized in a way to fit whatever are your needs.

scold helps in reducing manual copy-pasting of boilerplate/scaffolding code, it let's developers define custom templates for different kinds of objects (services, database entities, etc) that scold will render when running scold new <object_type>, while prompting for questions in the template.

I wasn't satisfied with the solutions I found online, the few I saw are in Javascript, but I wanted something native in Python that could be more easily included in projects without external dependencies. For the life of me I couldn't find something in Python, so I made this.

Usage

We first define a scold.toml file at the root of our project:

[project]
root_dir = "./src/scold/"  # object dirs get this value prepended
# how files get named by default, is overrided by some `file_naming` scoped prop.
# so `SampleRepository` -> `sample_repository` automatically
default_file_naming = "snake_case"

[objects.repository]
dir = "services/repositories/"
# vars get converted into a form that will be prompted when running cli
vars = [
  { field = "object_name", desc = "Name", type = "text", default = "SampleRepository" },  # required for all objects
  { field = "feature_toggles", desc = "Feature Toggles", group = [
    { field = "allow_deletion", desc = "Allow deletion", type = "bool", default = true },
    { field = "allow_extinction", desc = "Allow extinction", type = "bool", default = false },
  ] },
]

Then, in the directory for our object 'repository', we must have a __template folder (whole folder will be copied) OR a __template.* file (only file will be copied). Then you can use Mako's syntax in the template, benefitting from the variables declared in the scold.toml file.

When running scold new repository, we get a form prompting for our inputs:

Installation

The easiest way to install the scold cli is with uv. You can do the following to install it in your system:

uv tool install scold-cli

Acknowledgements

This project would not be possible if not for:

• Hygen - similar tool (although seems abandoned) written in the JS ecossystem, inspired Scold and its idea of templates within directories
• Copier - project templating tool for Python, doesn't focus in smaller pieces of code as Scold does, but Scold's means to render templates implicitly and the declarative form configs were inspired from this tool as well.
• uv - my beloved python tooling stack