Cookieplone 2.0.0a2 is out — try the new wizard and config format

Announcements
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Hi everyone :waving_hand:

A quick heads-up: Cookieplone 2.0.0a1 and 2.0.0a2 are out on PyPI as prereleases, and I'd love to get some early feedback before we cut the final 2.0.0.

If you want the full story behind this release — why we're doing it, what changed in my thinking over the last two years, and where it's going — I wrote it up here: Cookieplone, two years in: lessons learned and the road to 2.0

I also walked through 2.0 live on the latest kitconcept Office Hours: https://www.youtube.com/live/XvkYodVe2hA

What's new

A new form wizard

The biggest visible change: the prompts are no longer plain readline questions. Cookieplone now uses tui-forms as its default renderer, which gives you a confirmation page at the end, back-navigation between fields, proper validation error messages, and JSON Schema constraint support. You can still force the old non-interactive behaviour with --no-input, and the renderer is pluggable via config.renderer or the COOKIEPLONE_RENDERER env var.

cookieplone-config.json — a new repository config format

Template repositories can now ship a cookieplone-config.json file with:

  • JSON Schema validation for each template's inputs
  • Grouped templates — users first pick a category, then a template within it
  • Global version pinning, so all templates in a repo can share a single source of truth via {{ versions.<key> }} (with per-template overrides)
  • config.min_version, so a repo can refuse to run against an outdated Cookieplone and show a branded sanity screen instead of a cryptic error

The old cookiecutter.json fallback still works, and there's a new cutter2plone CLI to help you convert existing templates.

Better ergonomics for template authors

  • run_subtemplates() — a cleaner way to drive subtemplate generation from post-generation hooks, with an explicit {template_id: handler} dispatch
  • run_post_gen_actions() + built-in handlers (initialize_git_repository, create_namespace_packages, remove_files_by_key, move_files, run_make_format) so you stop copy-pasting the same post-gen code across templates
  • User answers are now dumped to .cookieplone.json inside the generated project, so you can replay or inspect what was used
  • --answers / --answers-file to load answers from JSON
  • Author and email now default to your git config
  • New validators for plone_version, volto_version, python_package_name, hostname, language_code

Under the hood

  • Formatters (black, isort, zpretty, ruff) are now invoked via uvx instead of being runtime dependencies — lighter install, no version conflicts with your project
  • generate() API consolidated into a GenerateConfig dataclass
  • New documentation site deployed to GitHub Pages, with a full guide on writing templates
  • Much better test coverage across config loaders, wizard, and generator

2.0.0a2 specifically

a2 is mostly polish on top of a1:

  • Fixed {{ versions.X }} not propagating into subtemplates (#178)
  • min_version check now runs before the welcome screen, with a proper sanity screen
  • New post-gen helpers mentioned above
  • Wizard tests no longer leak COOKIEPLONE_RENDERER from your shell

Full changelog: cookieplone/CHANGES.md at main · plone/cookieplone · GitHub

How to try it

Since it's a prerelease, you need to opt in:

uvx cookieplone@2.0.0a2

What I'd love from you

Thanks! :cookie:

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