Amazing GitHub Template - Sane defaults for your next project!

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Table of Contents

• About
  • Built With
• Getting Started
  • Prerequisites
  • Usage
    • Cookiecutter template
    • Manual setup
    • Variables reference
• Roadmap
• Contributing
• Support
• License
• Acknowledgements

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About

Open Source Software is not about the code in the first place but the communications and community. People love good documentation and obvious workflows. If your software solves some problem, but nobody can figure out how to use it or, for example, how to create an effective bug report, there's something very bad going on. Did you hear about Readme Driven Development? Check out the awesome article written by GitHub co-founder Tom Preston-Werner. There are many great README or issues templates available on GitHub, however, you have to find them yourself and combine different templates yourself. In addition, if you want extensive docs like CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md, CONTRIBUTING.md, SECURITY.md or even advanced GitHub features like a pull request template, additional labels, code scanning, and automatic issue/PR closing and locking you have to do much more work. Your time should be focused on creating something amazing. You shouldn't be doing the same tasks over and over like creating your GitHub project template from scratch. Follow the don’t repeat yourself principle. Use a template and go create something amazing! Key features of Amazing GitHub Template: Configurable README.md template Configurable LICENSE template Configurable CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md template Configurable CONTRIBUTING.md template Configurable SECURITY.md template Configurable issues template Pull request template CODEOWNERS template Additional labels template Automatic locking for closed issues and PRs workflow Automatic cleaning for stale issues and PRs workflow Automatic label verification for PRs workflow Automatic security code scanning workflow via CodeQL Additional info This project is the result of huge research. I'm a long-time GitHub user so I've seen more than 7.3k READMEs so far. I've started writing docs for my open source projects (that are currently in their early stages so they exist in the private space for now). After I've analyzed many popular GitHub READMEs and other GitHub-related docs and features I've tried to create a general-propose template that may be useful for any project. Of course, no template will serve all the projects since your needs may be different. So Cookiecutter comes to the rescue. It allows Jinja template language to be used for complex cases. Just enter up the project preferences you want in the Cookiecutter interactive menu and that's it. There is a manual setup that could be useful for your existing projects (or if you don't want to use Cookiecutter for some reason). This README.md file is not a template itself, you should download the precompiled template and replace the predefined values, then remove unused sections.

Built With

• GitHub Flavored Markdown Spec
• Cookiecutter
• GitHub Actions
• markdownlint-cli

Getting Started

Prerequisites

The recommended method to install Amazing GitHub Template is by using Cookiecutter. For manual install please refer to manual setup section.

The easiest way to install Cookiecutter is by running:

pip install --user cookiecutter

For other install options, please refer to Cookiecutter installation manual.

Usage

Cookiecutter template

After installing Cookiecutter, all you need to do is to run the following command:

cookiecutter gh:dec0dOS/amazing-github-template

You will get an interactive prompt where you'll specify relevant options for your project (or the default value will be used).

Manual setup

Please follow these steps for manual setup:

1. Download the precompiled template

2. Replace all the variables to your desired values

3. Initialize the repo in the precompiled template folder

   or

   Move the necessary files from precompiled template folder to your existing project directory. Don't forget the .github directory that may be hidden by default in your operating system

Variables reference

Please note that entered values are case-sensitive. Default values are provided as an example to help you figure out what should be entered.

On manual setup, you need to replace only values written in uppercase.

Name	Default value	Description
PROJECT_NAME	My Amazing Project	Your project name
REPO_SLUG	my-amazing-project	Repo slug must match the GitHub repo URL slug part
GITHUB_USERNAME	dec0dOS	Your GitHub username without @
FULL_NAME	Alexey Potapov	Your full name
OPEN_SOURCE_LICENSE	MIT license	Full OSS license name
modern_header	y	Use HTML to prettify your header
table_in_about	n	Use table to wrap around About section
include_logo	y	Include Logo section. Only valid when modern_header == y
include_badges	y	Include section for badges
include_toc	y	Include Table of Contents
include_screenshots	y	Include Screenshots section
include_project_assistance	y	Include Project assistance section
include_authors	y	Include Authors & contributors section
include_security	y	Include Security section and SECURITY.md file
include_acknowledgements	y	Include Acknowledgements section
include_code_of_conduct	y	Include CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md file
include_workflows	y	Include .github/workflows directory
use_codeql	y	Use CodeQL
use_conventional_commits	y	Add Conventional Commits notice
use_github_discussions	n	Use GitHub Discussions

NOTICE: to use GitHub Discussions, you have to enable it first.

Roadmap

See the open issues for a list of proposed features (and known issues).

• Top Feature Requests (Add your votes using the 👍 reaction)
• Top Bugs (Add your votes using the 👍 reaction)
• Newest Bugs

Contributing

First off, thanks for taking the time to contribute! Contributions are what makes the open-source community such an amazing place to learn, inspire, and create. Any contributions you make will benefit everybody else and are greatly appreciated.

Please try to create bug reports that are:

• Reproducible. Include steps to reproduce the problem.
• Specific. Include as much detail as possible: which version, what environment, etc.
• Unique. Do not duplicate existing opened issues.
• Scoped to a Single Bug. One bug per report.

Please adhere to this project's code of conduct.

You can use markdownlint-cli to check for common markdown style inconsistency.

Support

Reach out to the maintainer at one of the following places:

• GitHub discussions
• The email which is located in GitHub profile

License

This project is licensed under the MIT license. Feel free to edit and distribute this template as you like.

See LICENSE for more information.

Acknowledgements

Thanks for these awesome resources that were used during the development of the Amazing GitHub template:

• https://github.com/cookiecutter/cookiecutter
• https://github.github.com/gfm/
• https://tom.preston-werner.com/2010/08/23/readme-driven-development.html
• https://changelog.com/posts/top-ten-reasons-why-i-wont-use-your-open-source-project
• https://thoughtbot.com/blog/how-to-write-a-great-readme
• https://www.makeareadme.com
• https://github.com/noffle/art-of-readme
• https://github.com/noffle/common-readme
• https://github.com/RichardLitt/standard-readme
• https://github.com/matiassingers/awesome-readme
• https://github.com/LappleApple/feedmereadmes
• https://github.com/othneildrew/Best-README-Template
• https://github.com/mhucka/readmine
• https://github.com/badges/shields
• https://github.com/cjolowicz/cookiecutter-hypermodern-python
• https://github.com/stevemao/github-issue-templates
• https://github.com/devspace/awesome-github-templates
• https://github.com/cezaraugusto/github-template-guidelines
• https://github.com/frenck?tab=repositories
• https://docs.github.com/en/discussions/quickstart
• https://docs.github.com/en/actions