alien-start

Enhance your AlienDOM project with instant integrations.

This command-line tool is automatically included in the alien-dom-starter template repository.

What does it do?

AlienStart makes assumptions about your project structure, leaving you to focus on the fun parts of building your app. It can instantly add a plethora of useful tools to your AlienDOM project, like UnoCSS, Postgres, and more. We're always expanding the list of available integrations, so if you have a suggestion, please open an issue or a pull request!

AlienStart makes it very easy to add your own integrations (referred to as "mixins"). Take a look at our ./src/mixins/ folder to see how stream-lined the process is. In the future, we'll support using standalone mixins from the NPM registry.

The init command

If you're using the alien-dom-starter template, the alien-start init command will run automatically when you first install your project's initial dependencies.

AlienStart init first gives you the opportunity to name your project, replacing all occurrences of the default name provided by the template. Then it will pin your project's dependencies to the latest major version (using caret ^ syntax in the package.json files). This ensures reproducible installs for all developers on your team, while also ensuring you have the latest dependency versions available in your new project.

That's it for the init command!

The use command

This is the proverbial "meat and potatoes" of AlienStart. The use command is how you add integrations to your project.

You can specify the mixins you want to use as arguments to the use command. If you misspell any, the CLI will suggest the closest match.

$ alien-start use unocss postgres

You can call use without any arguments to see a list of available mixins. You can even search the list by typing! Once you find the mixins you want, select them with spacebar and press Enter to continue the integration process.

$ alien-start use

Once a mixin is applied, AlienStart will automatically commit to your project's git repository. This makes it easy to undo the integration if you change your mind.

The run command

The last command allows for mixins to add their own lifecycle scripts without crowding up your package.json file. AlienStart provides a dedicated scripts folder for this purpose.

If you're just getting started, don't worry too much about the specifics of the run command. Just know that it gives mixins the ability to extend your pnpm dev and pnpm build commands with their own scripts. They can even perform one-time setup by providing a "prepare" script.

For example, when you run alien-start run dev, AlienStart will run all scripts in the scripts/dev folder. This is a great place for mixins to add their own commands that run when you do pnpm dev in your terminal (assuming your package.json is set up to use alien-start run). Since dev scripts run in parallel by default, we also support serial execution with the scripts/dev/pre folder.

The run command isn't limited to dev scripts. Any scripts/{name} folder will be run when you do alien-start run {name}. These other script folders always use serial execution, and they support both pre and post execution with the special pre and post subfolders.