Backpack-factory NPM

BackpackFactory - Core

Inspired by backpack, made industrial.

The Backpack Factory is a building tool using using webpack. It is made to be very flexible and super light. The main goal is to have the factory installed globally with all the useful packages and configurations, and then using it in any project on your system.

How to use

First you need to install the core of factory:

npm install -g backpack-factory

Then you need to set up some patterns in the ./patterns directory. You will find many patterns in this github. For instance you can get base pattern.

Go to your local project and add some scripts to your ./package.json:

"dev": "backpack-factory dev",
"build": "backpack-factory build",

Create a configuraton file named ./factory.config.js, (note that if you are using the base-pattern, this file is optionnal).

module.exports = {
  pattern: 'base-pattern'
}

Then you can create the entry file for your application, by default, it should be ./src/main.js

Then run npm run dev and enjoy!

Configuration files

You can create configuraton files in your local project or in patterns directories. They must be called ./factory.config.js. There is no specific requirement for them but here are some default properties:

module.exports = {
  pattern: String, // Name of the pattern your using
  patterns: [String], // You can also pass an array of patterns.

  webpack: { // The webpack config to be passed to webapck for building
    // ...
  },

  updateConfig: function (config, webpack) { // A function to update dynamically the configuration
    // ...
    return config // /!\ Important
  },

  scripts: { // scripts that can be run using backpack-factory run scriptName
    dev (config, webpack) {
      // ...
    },
    build (config, webpack) {
      // ...
    },
    custom (config, webpack) {
      // ...
    }
  }
}

The config object will be initialized as { env: 'development' } (or { env: 'production' }) and then will go through all patterns you requested and finally through the local configuration. Each time, it will be merge (recursively) and the function updateConfig will be call on it (if the function is defined).

At the end the scripts will be given the full config object, so they may use the webpack property to feed a webpack compiler.

Patterns

A Pattern is a directory named after the pattern's name. It can contained pretty much anything, but mostly configuraton files ./factory.config.js and a list of dependencies in a ./package.json file. Note that modules installed in the patterns will be requirable in your local project.

Look for the basic patterns to have some examples.

CLI Commands

backpack-facrory run scriptName

This command is the one launch scripts from your pattern. Just type backpack-factory run scriptName to call scripts.scriptName.

backpack-factory build and backpack-factory dev are shortcuts for backpack-factory run build and backpack-factory run dev.

backpack-facrory get patternName

This command allows you to add pattern to the factory to be used later. For instance type backpack-facrory get base-pattern to download and setup base pattern.