generate-readme

Generate a README.md using answers to prompts and data from the environment, like package.json, .git config, etc. This generator can be run by command line if Generate is installed globally, or you can use this as a plugin or sub-generator in your own generator.

Need to generate documentation? You might also be interested in verb.

Table of Contents

• What is "Generate"?
• Command line usage
  • Install
  • Run
  • Help
  • Options
  • Running tasks
• Available tasks
• Running multiple generators
  • generate-package
  • generate-dest
• API usage
  • Install locally
  • Use as a plugin
  • Register as a generator
• Customization
  • Destination directory
  • Overriding templates
• About
  • Related projects
  • Contributing
  • Running tests
  • Author
  • License

(TOC generated by verb using markdown-toc)

What is "Generate"?

Generate is a command line tool and developer framework for scaffolding out new GitHub projects using generators and tasks.

Answers to prompts and the user's environment can be used to determine the templates, directories, files and contents to build. Support for gulp, base and assemble plugins, and much more.

For more information:

• Visit the generate project
• Visit the generate documentation
• Find generators on npm (help us author generators)

Command line usage

Install

Installing the CLI

To run the readme generator from the command line, you'll need to install Generate globally first. You can do that now with the following command:

$ npm install --global generate

This adds the gen command to your system path, allowing it to be run from any directory.

Install generate-readme

Install this module with the following command:

$ npm install --global generate-readme

Run

You should now be able to run generate-readme with the following command:

$ gen readme

What will happen?

Running $ gen readme will run the generator's default task, which will:

1. prompt you to choose a license to generate
2. prompt you for any information that's missing, if applicable (like author name, etc.)
3. render the necessary template(s) using your answers
4. write the resulting file(s) to the current working directory

Conflict detection

This generator will prompt you for feedback before overwrite existing files. You can set the destination to a new directory if you want to avoid the prompts, or avoid accidentally overwriting files with unintentional answers => 'Oops! I meant "no! Don't overwrite!!!"'.

What you should see in the terminal

If completed successfully, you should see both starting and finished events in the terminal, like the following:

[00:44:21] starting ...
...
[00:44:22] finished ✔

If you do not see one or both of those events, please let us know about it.

Help

To see a general help menu and available commands for Generate's CLI, run:

$ gen help

Options

• --dest, -d: set the destination directory to use for generated files
• --no-hints: Don't use hints in prompts (except for global data, like author.name)

Running tasks

Generators use tasks for flow control. Tasks are run by passing the name of the task to run after the generator name, delimited by a comma.

Example

For instance, the following will run generator foo, task bar:

$ gen foo:bar
       ^       ^
generator     task

Default task

When a task name is not explicitly passed on the command line, Generate's CLI will run the default task.

Available tasks

default

Alias for the readme:node task, to allow this generator to be run with the following command:

Example

$ gen readme
$ gen readme --dest ./docs

node

Generate a basic README.md for a node.js project to the current working directory or specified --dest.

Example

$ gen readme:node
$ gen readme:node --dest ./docs

min

Generate a minimal README.md to the current working directory or specified --dest. Also aliased as readme-minimal to provide a semantic task name for plugin usage.

Example

$ gen readme:min

Visit Generate's documentation for tasks.

Running multiple generators

Generate supports running multiple generators at once. The following generator(s) work well with generate-readme:

generate-package

Run generate-package before generate-readme to create a package.json for your project. Answers to your prompts will be used in generate-readme, so you will only be prompted for anything that hasn't already been answered.

$ gen package readme

Example

generate-dest

Run generate-dest before generate-readme to prompt for the destination directory to use for generated files.

$ gen dest readme

Example

API usage

Use generate-readme as a plugin in your own generator.

Install locally

Install with npm:

$ npm install --save generate-readme

Use as a plugin

When used as a plugin, tasks from generate-readme are added to your generator's instance.

module.exports = function(app) {
  app.use(require('generate-readme'));
  // do generator stuff
};

Running tasks

You can now run any tasks from generate-readme as if they were part of your own generator.

module.exports = function(app) {
  app.use(require('generate-readme'));

  app.task('foo', function(cb) {
    // do task stuff
    cb();
  });

  // run the `mit` task from `generate-readme`
  app.task('default', ['foo', 'mit']);
};

Register as a generator

When registered as a generator, tasks from generate-readme are added to the "namespace" you give to the generator.

module.exports = function(app) {
  app.register('foo', require('generate-readme'));
  // generate
};

Running tasks

Pass the names of one or more tasks to run to the .generate method, prefixed with the namespace of the sub-generator (foo, in our example):

Examples

Run the bar task from generator foo:

module.exports = function(app) {
  app.register('foo', require('generate-readme'));

  app.generate('foo:bar', function(err) {
    if (err) console.log(err);
  });
};

Wrap the call to .generate in a task, so it can be run on demand:

module.exports = function(app) {
  app.register('foo', require('generate-readme'));

  app.task('bar', function(cb) {
    app.generate('foo:bar', cb);
  });
};

More information

Visit the generator docs to learn more about creating, installing, using and publishing generators.

Customization

The following instructions can be used to override settings in generate-readme. Visit the Generate documentation to learn about other ways to override defaults.

Destination directory

To customize the destination directory, install generate-dest globally, then in the command line prefix dest before any other generator names.

For example, the following will prompt you for the destination path to use, then pass the result to generate-readme:

$ gen dest readme

Overriding templates

You can override a template by adding a template of the same name to the templates directory in user home.

For example, to override the foo.tmpl template, add a template at the following path ~/generate/templates/foo.tmpl, where ~/ is the user-home directory that os.homedir() resolves to on your system.

About

Related projects

• generate-gitignore: Generate any local or global .gitignore file from the github/gitignore repository. Use from the command… more | homepage
• generate-license: Generate a license file for a GitHub project. | homepage
• generate-package: Generate a package.json from a pre-defined or user-defined template. This generator can be used from… more | homepage

Contributing

Pull requests and stars are always welcome. For bugs and feature requests, please create an issue.

Running tests

Install dev dependencies:

$ npm install -d && npm test

Author

Jon Schlinkert

• github/jonschlinkert
• twitter/jonschlinkert

License

Copyright © 2016, Jon Schlinkert. Released under the MIT license.

This file was generated by verb-generate-readme, v0.1.31, on October 01, 2016.