Picnic is a simple template engine for writing python modules. You open a console and in any folder you type

picnic.py ModuleName

and it will produce the following folder, with (almost ?) all the files you need. All there is left to do is write the actual code :

/ModuleName
    /modulename
        /__init__.py
        /modulename.py # A file for the actual code
    /setup.py
    /README.rst
    /LICENCE.txt
    /MANIFEST.in
    /ez_setup.py # for Setuptools

The created package is configured to work with Setuptools because Setuptools rocks.

Two useful options are -git and -dev (the order doesn't matter):

picnic.py ModuleName -git -dev

The -git option will initialize a git repository will the newly created module (if git is installed):

# it will run these lines in the ModuleName folder
git init
git add .
git commit -m "Initial commit"
# it will also create a python-specific .gitignore file

The -dev option will run the following command at the end to install the newly created module in develop mode (i.e. you can do your changes on the module without needing to reinstall the module each time to test it)

sudo python setup.py develop

Get a zip of the code, for instance on Github . Unzip the code in some folder. You can the models of the files README.rst, setup.py etc in subfolder picnic/files and change them as you like. Then use the following command in the folder where the setup.py is

sudo python picnic.py install

Or even better, use this command instead, it will enable you to change the models of the files even after the installation:

sudo python picnic.py develop

Type this in a terminal

sudo pip install picnic

The problem with this installation is that you cannot customize the templates.

To test if it works go to any folder and type

picnic.py TestModule

Picnic is an open source software originally written by Zulko and released under the MIT licence. Please help make picnic better, for instance by expanding the capabilities, providing advice for sounder standards if you are an experienced module-maker, reporting bugs, etc. We love forks and pull resquests ! Picnic is being developped on Github, that's where you should go for troubleshooting and bug reports.