atlas-npm-init

A CLI tool for generating npm projects and necessary boilerplate.

install

npm install -g atlas-npm-init

why

I wanted to get the hang of abstracting things into packages, and I found the boilerplate work to be excessive (even with npm init) and 99% the same in every case. To me, this screams "automate me". Now, I can just run npm-init and fill out some questions (or use args) and I can immediately get to writing my code.

This package will generate a project with chai, mocha and some minimal boilerplate installed.

examples

using the cli tool

with args

You can specify a name, description, and author. At least one field is required, the rest are optional:

npm-init -n my-app -d "my description" -a "atlassubbed <[email protected]>"

without args

If you don't specify any args, you will be prompted to enter the name, description and author. In this case, all responses are optional. If you don't specify a name, it will default to "npm-package":

npm-init

specifying an author

If you specify a full author (with a name and email), the generator will automatically initialize a repository and perform an initial commit.

the generated project

structure

  npm-package/
    src/
      index.js
    test/
      index.test.js
    .travis.yml
    .gitignore
    LICENSE.md
    README.md
    package.json

scripts

You'll be provided with two scripts to run your tests:

1. npm run test-server: pretty mocha test output to CLI with hot-rerun.
2. npm test: pretty mocha test output to CLI.

npm install

Once you've generated my-app, all you need to do is:

cd my-app
npm install

todo

I'd like to have a global executable called atlas which has the following sub-commands:

1. npm: generates a minimal npm starter app.
2. webpack: generates a minimal webpack starter app.
3. repo: automatically sync your project to github or fork/clone existing projects.
4. logout
5. whoami
6. ~~login~~: Not needed, thanks to atlas-recursive-auth

As of right now, the atlas command only has subcommands 3 and 4 above. atlas-npm-init (this package) and altas-webpack-init are their own commands, but I'd like to turn them into 1 and 2 above, respectively. The atlas command should then be responsible for initializing pretty much everything in a new project.

caveats

license

LICENSE.md defaults to MIT. Currently, there's no option to change it from the CLI. Changing it manually would simply require editing a line in package.json and editing the LICENSE.md file itself.

sinon and sinon-chai

When I was writing this package, I included sinon and sinon-chai, but I removed them because I found myself not using them in my tests. sinon is great, but why don't I use it? Spying, stubbing and mocking is pretty easy without it.

git initialization

Currently, the generator will automatically initialize a repo and make the first commit if you specify a full author. There's no way to turn this off right now. I understand that this can be undesirable, but I always needed these steps, so I figured it would just be a default.