Update README.rst #33

Signed-off-by: Jono Yang <jyang@nexb.com>

Author: JonoYang

README.rst

@@ -2,7 +2,7 @@ A Simple Python Project Skeleton
 ================================
 This repo attempts to standardize our python repositories using modern python
 packaging and configuration techniques. Using this `blog post`_ as inspiration, this
-repository will serve as the base for all new python projects and will be adopted to all 
+repository will serve as the base for all new python projects and will be adopted to all
 our existing ones as well.
 
 .. _blog post: https://blog.jaraco.com/a-project-skeleton-for-python-projects/
@@ -33,7 +33,6 @@ Update an existing project
 
 This is also the workflow to use when updating the skeleton files in any given repository.
 
-
 Customizing
 -----------
 
@@ -42,6 +41,72 @@ You typically want to perform these customizations:
 - remove or update the src/README.rst and tests/README.rst files
 - check the configure and configure.bat defaults
 
+Initializing a project
+----------------------
+
+All projects using the skeleton will be expected to pull all of it dependencies
+from thirdparty.aboutcode.org/pypi or the local thirdparty directory, using
+requirements.txt and/or requirements-dev.txt to determine what version of a
+package to collect. By default, PyPI will not be used to find and collect
+packages from.
+
+In the case where we are starting a new project where we do not have
+requirements.txt and requirements-dev.txt and whose dependencies are not yet on
+thirdparty.aboutcode.org/pypi, we run the following command after adding and
+customizing the skeleton files to your project:
+
+.. code-block:: bash
+
+    ./configure --init
+
+This will initialize the virtual environment for the project, pull in the
+dependencies from PyPI and add them to the virtual environment.
+
+Generating requirements.txt and requirements-dev.txt
+----------------------------------------------------
+
+After the project has been initialized, we can generate the requirements.txt and
+requirements-dev.txt files.
+
+Ensure the virtual environment is enabled.
+
+To generate requirements.txt:
+
+.. code-block:: bash
+
+    python etc/scripts/gen_requirements.py -s tmp/lib/python<version>/site-packages/
+
+Replace \<version\> with the version number of the Python being used.
+
+To generate requirements-dev.txt after requirements.txt has been generated:
+
+.. code-block:: bash
+    ./configure --dev
+    source tmp/bin/activate
+    python etc/scripts/gen_requirements_dev.py -s tmp/lib/python<version>/site-packages/
+
+Collecting and generating ABOUT files for dependencies
+------------------------------------------------------
+
+Once we have requirements.txt and requirements-dev.txt, we can fetch the project
+dependencies as wheels and generate ABOUT files for them:
+
+.. code-block:: bash
+
+    python etc/scripts/bootstrap.py -r requirements.txt -r requirements-dev.txt --with-deps
+
+There may be issues with the generated ABOUT files, which will have to be
+corrected. You can check to see if your corrections are valid by running:
+
+.. code-block:: bash
+
+    python etc/scripts/check_thirdparty.py -d thirdparty
+
+Once the wheels are collected and the ABOUT files are generated and correct,
+upload them to thirdparty.aboutcode.org/pypi by placing the wheels and ABOUT
+files from the thirdparty directory to the pypi directory at
+https://github.com/nexB/thirdparty-packages
+
 
 Release Notes
 -------------