Make `sam init` work with custom locations with multiple templates

[ljacobsson]

Describe your idea/feature/enhancement

When running sam init the user is guided through a drill-down UI based on the content of aws/aws-sam-cli-app-templates. It seems to be controlled by the manifest.json file in the root.

Users who want to develop custom project templates are instructed to use the --location option, like sam init --location gh:myorg/myrepo. However, that expects a single project template in the root of that repo which leads organisations who want to provide more than one custom project template to use multiple repositories which quickly gets hard to maintain.

Proposal

Allow users to design custom repositories the same way as aws/aws-sam-cli-app-templates which get presented the same way as the default templates when running sam init --location ...

It looks like cookiecutter 1.7 supports defining a --directory (docs)

Additional Details

I maintain sam-patterns-cli - a tool that lets developers merge in SAM patterns from serverlessland.com/patterns into their templates. I've recently added a command to it that lets users initialise projects based on the templates in aws/aws-sam-cli-app-templates with the option to add custom repositories that follow the same structure.

Here I've configured the tool to include a custom location:

I'm hoping to be able to use this way of structuring custom templates with sam-cli to avoid diverging away from it and keep backward compatability

[heitorlessa]

cc @praneetap - I suggested that earlier directly to @ljacobsson, so Mathem and any other customer could have a single repo with multiple sub-templates to ease developers on-boarding.

This wasn't possible when SAM init was implemented. It's now a trivial change as SAM CLI only needs to propagate a directory parameter if available.

Code location that would need change from what I remember of the implementation:

• Lib part: https://github.com/aws/aws-sam-cli/blob/develop/samcli/lib/init/__init__.py#L22
• Add directory similar to extra context: https://github.com/aws/aws-sam-cli/blob/develop/samcli/lib/init/__init__.py#L80
• CLI argument to be added so it can be propagated down to the lib part: https://github.com/aws/aws-sam-cli/blob/develop/samcli/commands/init/__init__.py#L218

[praneetap]

sam-patterns is super cool @ljacobsson ! Thanks for making this feature request :) We will tag and prioritize, but anyone is welcome to contribute to speed this up.

[heitorlessa]

Praneeta - Happy to start working on it by end of Jan

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On Thu, 6 Jan 2022 at 07:18, Praneeta Prakash ***@***.***> wrote: sam-patterns is super cool @ljacobsson <https://github.com/ljacobsson> ! Thanks for making this feature request :) We will tag and prioritize, but anyone is welcome to contribute to speed this up. — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#3555 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAZPQBHAUMXQI23ESQPNLB3UUUX25ANCNFSM5K7MYKOA> . You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: ***@***.***>

[ljacobsson]

Great!

Please let me know if there's anything I can do to help

[ljacobsson]

Related to this - it'd be nice if the custom repository location could be persisted so the user doesn't have to enter it each time init is used.

In sam-patterns-cli this is solved by storing the repostiory locations under ~/.sam-patterns-cli/settings.json

[qingchm]

@heitorlessa Thanks! Feel free to shoot a PR and we'll arrange our team to review and get it pushed through!

[heitorlessa]

Haven't forgotten - just got side tracked with additional work. Still looking to contribute; end of Feb the latest

[heitorlessa]

related: #1326