The History of Templer

Templer is a system that grew out of the refactoring and improvement of the ZopeSkel code generation tool, used by the Plone and Zope communities for years. However, unlike its predecessor templer is not limited specifically to generating packages for Plone or Zope. With templer you can get a quick start building python-based projects for a number of systems and frameworks.

Templer and ZopeSkel

In the beginning, there was ZopeSkel. First created in 2006, it was used to install and run commands to create new Zope and Plone packages. And it was good. But it was also monolithic and inflexible.

And so, at the No Fun BBQ Sprint in 2009, the decision was made to split the package up in order to make it easier to work with only the parts you wanted. At the same time, the sprinters decided that keeping consistency in usage was a very important goal, and so the ZopeSkel package has been preserved. Information about the rationale behind this decision may be read in Splitting ZopeSkel into Egg Packages.

Starting with version 3.0, ZopeSkel is simply a thin wrapper around the functionality and templates provided by the templer system. Installing ZopeSkel installs the templer packages needed to reproduce the ZopeSkel experience. All the templates and supporting code are in templer packages and none remains in the ZopeSkel package.