Gatsby: Quick start using npx

[marcobiedermann]

Summary

Add documentation to use npx to get started with Gatsby

Basic example

npx gatsby new gatsby-site https://github.com/gatsbyjs/gatsby-starter-default

Motivation

This way you don't have to install the CLI globally which also keeps the CLI always up to date. Also Facebooks create-react-app switched to it

[kakadiadarpan]

@marcobiedermann a downside for this would be that users won't be able to use gatsby develop, gatsby build or gatsby serve directly.

Users will need to have scripts do that in package.json. What do you think about that?

[marcobiedermann]

@kakadiadarpan
Are you sure about this?
I don't have gatsby-cli installed on my machine and it does work for me like a charm.

npx gatsby new gatsby-site https://github.com/gatsbyjs/gatsby-starter-default

npm run develop

I also run npm uninstall -g gatsby-cli to double check.
Yes you are right that you are no longer able to run gatsby develop straight from the command line but I don't see any need for that. You should always use npm package scripts to run third party tools.

[pieh]

Some context on why we currently don't use npx in docs: Gatsby atm supports Node 6, which by default comes with npm version that doesn't have npx support - and our docs need to have instructions that will work on every supported Node version. We will probably be dropping Node 6 support in next major Gatsby release and then we will be able to convert docs to use npx (and async/await in code examples)

[dashed]

Personally, I'm not a fan of globally installing npm packages.

If gatsby-cli was installed as a dev-dependency, then yarn develop or npm run develop will work fine, since yarn/npm will know to use the locally-installed gatsby-cli package.

See:

• https://yarnpkg.com/en/docs/cli/#locally-installed-clis
• https://docs.npmjs.com/cli/run-script

[wardpeet]

I do understand both parties here. We (gatsby team) don't want to make it more complex for beginners but I think it's still a good idea to show the npx option as an alternative installation as most users are on node 8 or have npx installed on node 6.

I'll think about how to make a subtle PR for this so we add npx as a sidenote.

We can also create some packages to support yarn create

For now i'll make this item as blocked because we are waiting for Node 8

[tafelito]

The github repo for the default starter says to use npx gatsby new ... but then it says to run gatsby develop. If the the cli is not globally installed that failes as pointed out by @kakadiadarpan

isn't npx gatsby develop same as doing npm run develop or yarn develop?

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[SirLemuel]

Has there been any update on this?

[cyrfer]

it still seems relevant...

[djangorris]

Any update on this? It's still relevant...

[peduarte]

npx would be sweet. just sayin'