Package-maintenance: Building `create-pkg`

[darcyclarke]

EDIT by @boneskull: This issue has been moved to pkgjs/create#9; please comment there

Recently, I was able to transfer the ownership of the create-pkg package over to the @pkgjs org on npmjs.com. The hope here is that this namespace/package can serve as tooling to scaffold new projects with whatever defaults this group wants to define & be unblocked by npm-specific defaults in npm init.

@wesleytodd @ruyadorno & I got together the other day to discuss this a bit more & here's some of the notes from that discussion:

Note: We'd love input & to have a broader discussion about how/what we could build

create-pkg

Goals:

1. Provide a tool that promotes sane package defaults (defined by PMWG)
2. Provide tools to extend defaults per community/team

Example Usage:

$ npm init pkg
$ npx create-pkg

const pkg = require('create-pkg')
import pkg from 'create-pkg'

Questions:

1. What do we want the scaffold output to include?
   
   
   
   • package.json
     
     
     
     
     
     • name
     
     
     
     • description
     
     
     
     • homepage
     
     
     
     • author
     
     
     
     • license
     
     
     
     • funding
     
     
     
     • version
     
     
     
     • type
     
     
     
     • main
     
     
     
     • scripts
       
       
       
       
       
       
       
       • "prepublish": "..."* (contentious)
       
       
       
       
       • "test": "..."* (contentious)
       
       
       
       
     
     
     
     • exports
     
     
     
   
   
   • index.js
   
   
   • LICENSE
   
   
   • CONTRIBUTING.md
   
   
   • CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md
   
   
   • README.md
   
   
   • FUNDING.yml* (contentious)
   
   
   • .npmrc* (contentious)
   
   
   • .gitignore* (contentious)
     
     
     
     
     
     • Contents: /node_modules
     
     
     
   
   
   • .github/ISSUE_TEMPLATES/** (contentious)
   
   
2. What API surface do we want to expose to both end users and folks who want to compose the base generator with their own custom opinions?
   
   
   
   • Interfaces: CLI w/ Interactive/Prompts & a JS API
   
   

Next Steps:

• Get some general consensus of the approach we'd like to take building this & the defaults we'd want
• Update @pkgjs/support to be a consumer of this tool or vice-versa

References & Prior Art:

• Github gitignore: https://github.com/github/gitignore/blob/master/Node.gitignore
• Collection user input: https://github.com/wesleytodd/opta
• Yeoman
• Plop
• npm init x (ie. $ npx create-x)
• And probably many many more scaffolding tools/generators...

[mhdawson]

In meeting was mentioned that

CONTRIBUTORS.md

should be

CONTRIBUTING.md

[Christian24]

I hope this is the correct place to post this: Since npm v7 supports workspaces, it would be helpful to have a variant of this potentially be able to setup workspaces/monorepositories too. Maybe some inspiration can be drawn from https://github.com/lerna/lerna/tree/master/commands/init#readme. I probably cannot attend tomorrow, but since I just heard about this at the npm RFC meeting, I thought I would drop it here.

[wesleytodd]

While I am not sure that would be a top priority for the first iteration, I completely agree that it should be a feature of this tool.

[ruyadorno]

@wesleytodd please remember to also add me to the org 😊

[thescientist13]

Count me in to help on next steps @wesleytodd ! 👋

[rxmarbles]

@wesleytodd ditto for me as well

[rodion-arr]

Will be happy to help here

[wesleytodd]

This one is waiting on me, I have I think all of the code on my machine, just need to run through it and push. Sorry for the delay, I will try to get to it this week.

[boneskull]

I'm looking for some more context on this. @darcyclarke describes what the package is intended to do, but does not describe what lead the team to want to build this.

[boneskull]

For scripts.test, I like "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1" :smile:

[mhdawson]

@wesleytodd any chance you could just push what you have, warts and all ?

[wesleytodd]

After pushing I noticed a few things wrong with what I pushed, but here is the start: https://github.com/pkgjs/create

[boneskull]

@boneskull move this list into pkgjs/create repo

[boneskull]

@wesleytodd your friendly 🙂😁😄😜 reminder to move create-package-json etc. into pkgjs org

[boneskull]

Closing in lieu of pkgjs/create#9

To anyone who wants to help move this forward, please see that issue/repo.

[boneskull]

Maybe we should keep this open as a "tracking" issue for package-maintenance-agenda? IDK. It should still probably stay on the agenda... new issue?