How to use project templates?

My (former) usual practice was to create a Python virtual environment, then install cookiecutter and use it to create new project directories with this template. Those projects of course will have their own Python, R, etc. requirements that needs to be installed afterwards to use.

Below, I have added an updated approach that simplified by using uv.

(simplified/updated approach) Steps with UV to use the cookiecutter template

0. Open a terminal
1. Install uv, see https://docs.astral.sh/uv/getting-started/installation/
2. To use this template with cookiecutter simply do uvx cookiecutter gh:akbaritabar/cookiecutter_projects_template
3. Answer the questions asked and it will create a project in your terminal's working directory using this template. It will include all the files and ReadMe items which now are populated using your answers to the questions about the project.

Steps to extend the project folder using UV and install requirements etc (if needed)

1. In the terminal, cd to the project folder created above, and to use a specific version of Python uv init --python 3.13
2. To add all packages listed in requirements uv add -r requirements.txt
3. Now, to run code using snakemake use uvx (or uv tool run) as in uvx snakemake --version
4. Or to use VS Code that already inherits the environment created by uv do code .
5. Or for Jupyter lab do uv run --with jupyter jupyter lab
6. To see requirements and project's dependencies uv tree and to record all those that are installed so far with requirements.txt or by uv add packageName (and removed by uv remove packageName) uv sync

(older approach) Steps to use the template

1. Open a terminal
2. Install vanilla Python from: https://www.python.org/
   1. See my guidelines on using Pyenv
3. Create a folder e.g., projectTemplates and use Virtualenv to create env inside it with python -m virtualenv env, activate it with .\Scripts\activate.bat (on Windows), and install the requirements, i.e., python -m pip install -r requirements.txt
4. Then cd to 'C:\projectTemplates' which is now a vanilla Python environment created for cookiecutter templates using the 'requirements.txt' file in this directory (which simply includes cookiecutter. I also included the data science template, that could be useful but is more elaborated than what I needed).
5. To use the GitHub version of my own template, do cookiecutter 'https://github.com/akbaritabar/cookiecutter_projects_template'
6. Answer the questions asked and it will create a project in your terminal's working directory using this template. It will include all the files and ReadMe items which now are populated using your answers to the questions about the project.
7. Create a virtual environment for Python and install requirements as I wrote above (See my guidelines on using Pyenv) and enjoy!