rachis-plugin-creator

name	rachis-plugin-creator
description	Scaffold new QIIME 2 plugins from the official template

QIIME 2 Plugin Creator

Overview

Create a new QIIME 2 plugin project by writing files directly from the bundled template. No external tools (Copier, cookiecutter, etc.) are required — read the template reference and write each file with the user's values substituted in.

Workflow

1. Confirm the destination path for the new plugin project.
2. Read references/template-fields.md and collect any values the user wants to override. Apply the derivation rules for module_name and plugin_name unless the user provides explicit values.
3. Read references/plugin-template.md for the complete file structure and contents.
4. Create every directory and file listed in the template, substituting {field_name} placeholders with the resolved values. Pay close attention to:
   • File and directory names that contain {package_name}, {module_name}, or {target_distro}.
   • The LICENSE file: only populate it if the user chose BSD-3-Clause, MIT, or Apache-2.0. For skip-license, create an empty LICENSE file.
   • The pyproject.toml [tool.versioningit.format] section uses literal double braces ({base_version}, {distance}, etc.) — these are NOT template variables.
   • The ci.yml GitHub Actions workflow uses ${{ matrix.os }} etc. — write these literally, they are GitHub Actions expressions.
   • Do NOT create .copier-answers.yml — it is a Copier artifact and is not needed.
5. Copy the binary test fixture static/table-1.biom into {module_name}/tests/data/table-1.biom in the generated project.
6. Create a conda environment using one of the environment files but install the plugin from the current working directory using pip rather than point to a GitHub repository (it may not exist yet). Never modify existing conda environments.
7. Run qiime dev refresh-cache in that environment followed by qiime info. Make sure that the returned plugin list contains the new plugin.
8. Initialize a git repository in the new project directory with git init and create an initial commit.

References

• references/template-fields.md — field names, defaults, derivation rules, and allowed values.
• references/plugin-template.md — complete file structure and contents for the plugin scaffold.

Resources

• static/table-1.biom — binary BIOM test fixture to copy into generated projects.