Kickstart-cli NPM

kickstart

Kick start a project by generating code according to template. Defined a template project and reuse it again and again to kick start new projects. All kinds of projects are supported no matter what programming languages they use.

It's a much simpler alternative to Yeoman.

Install

yarn global add kickstart-cli

Usage

ks -k kickstart-project -o output-directory

A new project will be created at output-directory, using kickstart-project as template.

-o output-directory is optional. By default it is ., a.k.a. the current directory.

Features

Support projects in all programming languages.
Support any project to be used as template, even they are not created for scaffolding purpose.
Support templating, thanks to nunjucks.

Why?

Lots of projects look similar. For example, when I start a new JavaScript projects, I always created the following files: README.md, package.json, .gitignore, .editorconfig, .babelrc...etc.

I wanted a command line utility to create those files for me. I checked the popular Yeoman project but failed to comprehend its authoring workflow. I decided to create a new tool which is both flexible and straightforward.

Q & A

Is kickstart for JavaScript projects only?
- Nope, it is for all kinds of projects no matter what programming languages they use.
Does kickstart support template projects with nested directory structure?
- Yes. Template project can have deeply nested directory strucutre.
What's the main differences between Yeoman and kickstart?
- A template project for Yeoman (they call it a generator project) must be a Node.js module. Kickstart doesn't have this requirement.
  - Yeoman could generate projects for all kinds of languages but the template/generator project must be Node based. So developers who don't write JavaScript might have difficulty authoring a template/generator project.
- Kickstart is much simpler than Yeoman. On the other hand, it doesn't have as many features as Yeoman. Kickstart is pretty new and it is still under development.
Why is kickstart better than cp -r source-project target-directory ?
- kickstart won't copy .git/
- kickstart won't copy files/directories specified in .gitignore
- kickstart supports configuration and templating.

How it works

First of all, ask yourself: do I or my users create similar projects again and again? If the answer is no, you probably don't need kickstart and you can stop reading on.

If the answer is yes, create a template project for those similar projects to abstract the things that they have in common. For strings that each project might have a different value, define them as {{ variable }}.

For example, I can define a template for JavaScript projects with the following directory structure:

kickstart-javascript
    - README.md
    - package.json
    - .gitignore
    - kickstart.yml

Please note that, a template project usually has a kickstart.yml file in its root directory. If no kickstart.yml file is found, an empty one will be used instead. Thus allows any project to be used as a template project.

A sample package.json file:

{
  "name": "{{ name }}",
  "version": "{{ version }}",
  "license": "{{ license }}",
}

A sample kickstart.yml file:

name: my-app
version: 0.1.0
license: MIT

Run the following command to generate a new project:

mkdir my-awesome-project && cd my-awesome-project
ks -k /path/to/kickstart-javascript/

The generated project:

my-awesome-project
    - README.md
    - package.json
    - .gitignore

Generated package.json file has the following content:

{
  "name": "my-app",
  "version": "0.1.0",
  "license": "MIT",
}

You can also edit the kickstart.yml file as below before executing the ks command:

name: cool-project
version: 0.2.0
license: MIT

In such case the generated package.json file is:

{
  "name": "cool-project",
  "version": "0.2.0",
  "license": "MIT",
}

Advanced templating

Nunjucks is the underlying templating engine.

You can use some of its adanvaced features. Sample:

kickstart.yml:

food:
  ketchup: 5 tbsp
  mustard: 1 tbsp
  pickle: 0 tbsp

Template:

{% for ingredient, amount in food %}
  Use {{ amount }} of {{ ingredient }}
{% endfor %}

Templating in directory/file name

You can use templating in directory/file name.

For example:

src/{{ serviceName }}/handler.js

Comments

You can write comments as {# comments #} which will be omitted when generating code.

Todo

Each template project must be a runnable project itself
Toml + regex as config file
- Just use string match, no regex
- Then how to support if, for...etc?
  - Can we give up these adavanced templating features?
    - Then no more nunjucks