PackageMaker

GUI for PkgTemplates.jl: "Creating new Julia packages, the easy way" - made a bit simpler.

This package allows you to create either a new package or a new project. It implements a subset of PkgTemplates.jl features (which hopefully cover >90% of its use cases). It also adds a couple of features of its own, e.g. ability to create Julia projects, or adding dependencies to project or packages being created, with more to come. Being a GUI app, it should be mostly self-explanatory, and external links for more information are provided from the GUI, too.

Installation

It is recommended to install this package into a separate shared environment, e.g. one named @PackageMaker. The package ShareAdd can help you with using shared environments.

julia> ]
(@v1.11) pkg> activate @PackageMaker
  Activating new project at `~/.julia/environments/PackageMaker`

(@PackageMaker) pkg> add PackageMaker

Before you start, make sure that you set up global user.name, user.email, as well as (in case you are to use GitHub-bound plugins) github.user in git.

Usage

julia> ]
(@v1.11) pkg> activate @PackageMaker

julia> using PackageMaker

julia> gogui() 

Then fill out the GUI form and press "Submit". The project/package will be created.

By default the function gogui() will exit Julia after a successfull finish. If such behavior is undesirable, call it as gogui(false).

Current issues

There may be a problem if run from Julia in terminal on Ubuntu 24, due to an upstream bug. If possible, in such a case run the package from VSCode, then it should work. Otherwise run the macro @unsafe, which would disable Electron sandboxing. To be on the safe side, make sure to terminate Julia after creating a package (which is actually the default behavior of gogui()).

julia> @unsafe;
julia> gogui()