Prevent files from the root dir of the project being copied

[Steinkreis]

Is it possible to only copy the 📁 {{project_name}} and not the rest of the template? For example:

📁 my_copier_template # your template project
├── 📄 copier.yml # your template configuration
├── 📁 .git/ # your template is a Git repository
├── 📁 {{project_name}} # a folder with a templated name
│ └── 📄 {{module_name}}.py.jinja # a file with a templated name
└── 📄 {{_copier_conf.answers_file}}.jinja
└── 📄 pyproject.toml

all files inside "my_copier_template" like the pyproject.toml will be copied to my cwd. This is something i don't want. I just want to get the project folder that i define with {{project_name}}. Is it possible to restrict this somehow?

[sisp]

I'm not sure I understand your problem. Why don't you want a file like pyproject.toml to be copied? Is this file part of the template and not part of the project to be generated?

[Steinkreis]

Hey thanks for your reply. I want to treat "my_copier_template" as my general template that i reference when i create new projects. Because "my_copier_template" is a repo itself with dependencies that need to be managed i use the pyproject.toml for that. However the actual template that i try to copy is the {{project_name}} folder. Inside that are several files like pre-defined pyproject.toml, pre-commit.yaml etc. When i run "copier copy my_copier_template ." I only want to copy the {{project_name}} folder and not the other files at the top level of "my_copier_template".

[sisp]

What you want is this filesystem layout

 📁 my_copier_template # your template project
 ├── 📄 copier.yml # your template configuration
 ├── 📁 .git/ # your template is a Git repository
-├── 📁 {{project_name}} # a folder with a templated name
+├── 📁 template/
+│   ├── 📄 {{_copier_conf.answers_file}}.jinja
 │   └── 📄 {{module_name}}.py.jinja # a file with a templated name
-├── 📄 {{_copier_conf.answers_file}}.jinja
 └── 📄 pyproject.toml

with copier.yml like this:

_subdirectory: template

Unlike Cookiecutter, Copier doesn't use a templated directory name as the destination directory. Instead, you simply provide the destination directory via CLI, which is much more intuitive.

[Steinkreis]

Thanks again for replying. I tried it with you changes, however there are two problems now:

• All the top level files are still being copied
• Now just the content of "template" is copied into my destination

My desired outcome would be however to do a copier copy to my template repo and create a new folder with the project_name inside my destination.
So I would do copier copy my_copier_template . . In my questions i would answer "new_project" on the project_name question. Finally i would get a new folder "new_project" in my cwd and no other files from the root of "my_copier_template".

[sisp]

This is not how Copier works. See also #1322. Deriving the destination directory's name from a question is not possible with Copier, and in fact it shouldn't be because (a) a directory with the same name might already exist and (b) the local directory name doesn't matter – it's only local on your machine anyway and doesn't affect the remote repo's name/path. If Copier worked like that, applying multiple templates to the same destination directory wouldn't work.

Copier expects you to generate a project like this:

copier copy $src $dst

Whether $dst and {{project_name}} happen to be identical or not is your choice.

[pawamoy]

I think you're looking for _subdirectory: project_name (its name shouldn't be templated)? However that will only render the Python module in the output directory. You probably want an additional directory layer.

[Steinkreis]

Hey thanks for your reply.
So basically my template repo looks like this

📁 my_copier_template # your template project
├── 📄 copier.yml # your template configuration
├── 📁 .git/ # your template is a Git repository
├── 📁 {{project_name}} # a folder with a templated name
│ └── 📄 {{module_name}}.py.jinja # a file with a templated name
│ └── 📄 other files
└── 📄 {{_copier_conf.answers_file}}.jinja
└── 📄 pyproject.toml

I want to "copier copy my_copier_template . " and only get following folders and files:

├── 📁 {{project_name}} # a folder with a templated name
│ └── 📄 {{module_name}}.py.jinja # a file with a templated name
│ └── 📄 other files

I tried to include _subdirectory: "{{project_name}}" in the copier.yaml but i get:
Traceback (most recent call last):
File "/.venv/bin/copier", line 8, in
sys.exit(copier_app_run())
File "/.venv/lib/python3.10/site-packages/plumbum/cli/application.py", line 638, in run
inst, retcode = subapp.run(argv, exit=False)
File "/.venv/lib/python3.10/site-packages/plumbum/cli/application.py", line 633, in run
retcode = inst.main(*tailargs)
File "/.venv/lib/python3.10/site-packages/decorator.py", line 232, in fun
return caller(func, *(extras + args), **kw)
File "/.venv/lib/python3.10/site-packages/copier/cli.py", line 72, in handle_exceptions
return method(*args, **kwargs)
File "/.venv/lib/python3.10/site-packages/copier/cli.py", line 265, in main
with self._worker(
File "/.venv/lib/python3.10/site-packages/copier/main.py", line 205, in exit
raise value
File "/.venv/lib/python3.10/site-packages/copier/cli.py", line 272, in main
worker.run_copy()
File "/.venv/lib/python3.10/site-packages/copier/main.py", line 754, in run_copy
self._render_folder(src_abspath)
File "/.venv/lib/python3.10/site-packages/copier/main.py", line 643, in _render_folder
for file in src_abspath.iterdir():
File "/usr/lib/python3.10/pathlib.py", line 1017, in iterdir
for name in self._accessor.listdir(self):
FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: '/tmp/copier.vcs.clone.8c7rgngv/testtest '