idea: integrate cargo-generate to provide a maturin new command

[davidhewitt]

I think it'd be really cool if maturin (or PyO3) provided a few template projects which users could use to get started with their projects.

cargo-generate already exists, so it's of course possible to make a few template repos and leave it there.

However, I think that users coming from Python to Rust for the first time would probably prefer to learn fewer tools, so wrapping up cargo-generate inside a maturin new command would be a nice experience for them.

It looks like it shouldn't be too hard to call cargo_generate::generate directly. I think the hard work would be creating and maintaining template repos.

What do you think?

[messense]

I'm a little worried that cargo-generate will pull in all of cargo's dependencies.

https://github.com/cargo-generate/cargo-generate/blob/983a03a8fb81c6f5fec9af09ec76106ea98137b6/Cargo.toml#L14

Edit: opened cargo-generate/cargo-generate#444

[davidhewitt]

👍 it definitely might have negative impacts on maturin's build time, even with the cargo dependency removed.

[messense]

Another way to do this is to just shell out to cargo-generate like how wrangler does.

Things gets complicated if we add cargo-generate as a dependency since it will pull in openssl while maturin is using rustls for easier cross compilation.

[davidhewitt]

Another way to do this is to just shell out to cargo-generate like how wrangler does.

IMO there's two downsides to this, though neither of them game-changers:

• if cargo-generate ever releases breaking changes, we might have some crashes reported by users who have mismatching versions
• we need to instruct users to install an extra thing before starting their project if we use maturin new on the PyO3 README. I think it would be really cool if we could tell them just to use maturin to get it all started. Something like:

  $ pip install maturin
  $ maturin new hello_rust
  $ cd hello_rust
  $ maturin develop --release
  

Things gets complicated if we add cargo-generate as a dependency since it will pull in openssl while maturin is using rustls for easier cross compilation.

Hmm good point. Would you be happier if I opened a PR to switch cargo-generate to rustls?

Rather than put a lot of work into this, perhaps I can start by making some cargo-generate templates. Let's see whether we like those first before we put a lot of work into maturin new.

[messense]

Hmm good point. Would you be happier if I opened a PR to switch cargo-generate to rustls?

openssl dependency comes from libgit2 so it's not that easy.

$ cargo tree -i openssl-sys
openssl-sys v0.9.66
├── libgit2-sys v0.12.22+1.1.0
│   └── git2 v0.13.21
│       └── cargo-generate v0.9.0 (/Users/messense/Projects/cargo-generate)
└── libssh2-sys v0.2.21
    └── libgit2-sys v0.12.22+1.1.0 (*)

Rather than put a lot of work into this, perhaps I can start by making some cargo-generate templates. Let's see whether we like those first before we put a lot of work into maturin new.

Sounds good.