dc-up¶

dc-up brings a repository up to a managed baseline.

It is designed for repositories that follow repeatable professional patterns but still contain local, project-specific work. The tool updates shared repository infrastructure from canonical templates while preserving source code, tests, notebooks, data, documentation, and other project-specific surfaces unless those areas are explicitly managed.

Purpose¶

Many repositories share the same infrastructure:

• editor and Git configuration
• ignore and line-ending rules
• Markdown, YAML, and link-checking configuration
• Python tooling configuration
• documentation tooling configuration
• continuous integration workflows
• release and package validation surfaces

Keeping those files synchronized by hand is error-prone. dc-up makes the shared parts explicit, repeatable, and reviewable.

Design Model¶

dc-up separates repository maintenance into three concerns:

1. Canonical templates define the standard files and managed content.
2. Repository conventions identify the target repository shape and applicable template layers.
3. Repository-specific surfaces remain local to the project and require human review.

The tool is intentionally conservative. It should update files that are known to be managed and report the areas that require human judgment.

Template Layers¶

Templates are applied as ordered layers. Later layers may override files from earlier layers.

The standard layer model replaces as specificity increases:

• ALL for files shared by all repositories.
• ALL-PY for Python repository tooling.
• ALL-PY-SRC for Python repositories with a src/ package layout.
• ...

This keeps the baseline additive instead of duplicative.

Managed and Preserved Surfaces¶

A managed surface is a file or section that can be updated from the canonical baseline.

A preserved surface is project-specific and should not be overwritten automatically. Examples include source code, tests, notebooks, data files, SQL files, and module-specific documentation.

When a file contains both repeated and project-specific material, the long-term model is to manage only marked sections and leave the rest under local ownership.

Long-Term Goal¶

The goal of dc-up is to make repository maintenance boring.

A maintainer should be able to open one repository, bring the shared infrastructure up to the current baseline, review the remaining project-specific work, and continue working on the actual course, package, or software artifact.