feature: Support project templates in `meltano init`

Related ‘modules’ draft spec here:

• #7100

Feature scope

Other

Description

For example, someone from the community creates a Meltano project to move data from Shopify to Snowflake, and makes it available as a “template” in a public GitHub repo.

Then, other users could reuse the template with something like:

meltano init my_project --template=https://github.com/cooldataperson/meltano-shopify-snowflake-template

[sbalnojan]

@aaronsteers I’m a fan of getting people started as quickly as possible, so this really resonates with me:

mkdir new_proj
pip install meltano
meltano init . --template=template-aws-s3-csv-snowflake

would make a neat workflow.

One piece would be missing: the configuration. Maybe we could use something like the terraform approach to modules? Modules in terraform come with a .tfvariables file which has the definitions of the variables one has to change with a comment behind them.

So our workflow above would then have just one final step: adapt the .meltanovariables file to your setup. I guess we could just do this by using an .env file (without introducing the .meltanovariables file). That would work with existing functionality as far as I understand it. So ship every template with a .template-config.env file.

[aaronsteers]

FYI - I’ve drafted a very early spec discussion for modules as subprojects:

• #7100

Feedback, questions, suggestions much appreciated.