Cookie Cutter

I recently reorganized a project I was working on to follow Nobe's folder structure, and when I started a new computational project, I realized I would have to create the same folder structure again. Since, we're in the business of not repeating ourselves, I created a short Bash script that implements the basic folder structure outlined by Noble. When I brought up the project to our discussion board, Pat Schloss chimed in with a similar project based on the same motivational paper, and my project even got a pull request!

"Cookie cutter" projects are quite common — essentially, they are pre-built templates for project that follow some kind of convention for folder structures and basic boilerplate.

For Software Carpentry, it serves as a way for us to teach our attendees some best practices while showing them the importance of reproducibility and scripts. It also allows a low barrier of entry to actually set up a project folder structure, since re-organizing folders when a project is fully developed will most likely not happen.

If you use cookie cutter project templates of some kind, we'd like to hear about them: please add pointers to this GitHub issue or mail us directly.