@kurtmckee can you take a look?

@meganlkm I continue to think that an empty options list should manifest as a ValueError that explicitly says "the list of options is empty". This is the feedback that I previously provided in #2066, which was closed for lack of response and lack of tests.

@pydanny and @audreyfeldroy Would you take a gander at this behavioral change? Here's the summary:

When cookiecutter is told NOT TO ASK the user for input, but the list of choices to select from is empty:

• cookiecutter currently raises an IndexError as a side effect of accessing the empty list's first element.

• This PR modifies the behavior to return an empty string.

• My suggestion is that an empty list should raise a ValueError to indicate that the list of choices is empty. Something like this:

      if not rendered_options:
          raise ValueError("The list of choices is empty")
      if no_input:
          return rendered_options[0]
      return read_user_choice(key, rendered_options, prompts, prefix)

The current behavior is incorrect, but I don't think the solution is to return a hard-coded empty string.

If returning an empty string seems like correct, new behavior to you, this PR is good for merging.

sorry, i was about to suggest and well ... not enough coffee here