laoban-dev

Projects

A laoban project is a directory with a package.details.json file in it. This project MUST be under a directory that has a laoban.json file in it.

Typical package.details.json

{
  "template":    "typescript",
  "name":        "laoban",
  "description": "A cli for managing projects that have many npm packages",
  "links":       [
    "@laoban/variables", "@laoban/generations", "@laoban/validation", "@laoban/debug", "@laoban/files"
  ],
  "packageJson": {
    "dependencies": {
      "xlsx": "^0.18.5"
    },
    "devDependencies": {}
  },
  "guards":      {
    "compile": true,
    "test":    true,
    "publish": true
  }
}

Name	Purpose
template	This examples ‘what type of project this is’.
name	The name of the project. This is the value that the project would be published to in npmjs
description	Human readable description of the project.
details.links	This is how we express ‘This project depends on other projects’
details.compile/test/publish	These control if commands are executed in this project
packageJson.dependencies	These are the dependencies that will be added to the package.json file
packageJson.devDependencies	These are the devDependencies that will be added to the package.json file

Project details file and variables

All the fields in a package.details.json file are available as variables in scripts.

How do I find what packages exist

laoban packages

If we examine the results of this in the laoban project itself

modules\debug       => @laoban/debug       (remoteTypescript)
modules\files       => @laoban/files       (typescript      ) depends on [@laoban/utils]
modules\generations => @laoban/generations (typescript      ) depends on [@laoban/debug,@laoban/utils]
modules\laoban      => laoban                 (typescript      ) depends on [@laoban/variables,@laoban/generations,@laoban/validation,@laoban/debug,@laoban/
files]
modules\utils       => @laoban/utils       (typescript      )
modules\validation  => @laoban/validation  (typescript      )
modules\variables   => @laoban/variables   (typescript      )

Each line corresponds to a packages. We can see the directory and the npm name of the packages. The value in (brackets) is the template of the packages The dependencies between the packages are shown at the end.

What are package dependencies?

Each laoban package can depend on others. This is important for things like ‘compilation order’. If we are compiling all the projects we want to compile the dependent projects first.

Dependencies are specified in the package.details.json file. A sample is shown here

Note that the links reference the name of the project not the directory. With a javascript project this is the name that would be present in npmjs.

How can I use the packages dependencies

You can execute any script in link order by

laoban helloWorld -l

How can I see what order the commands will be executed in

Adding the -g option says display the generation plan. This will show the order that the

laoban helloWorld -lg

Generation 0 modules\debug, modules\utils

Generation 1 modules\files, modules\generations, modules\variables, modules\validation

Generation 2 modules\laoban

This is telling us that all the projects in generation 0 will be executed before the projects in generation 1 and so on.

How do I make a packages from scratch

• Create a subdirectory under the directory that holds the laoban.json file.
• Add to a file called packages.details.json (I usually copy an existing one)
• Decide what template it should be
• Make sure that the name and description are filled in correctly
• Add in any links if the project depends on another packages
• Execute laoban update

You should be able to see the packages now if you execute laoban packages

Typical package.details.json

• template is the name of the subdirectory that holds the configuration files that laoban will place in the project
• name is the name of the project. This is injected into package.json by update
• description is the name of the project. This is injected into package.json by update
• packageJson holds information that will be merged into the package.json file
  • dependencies and devDependencies are the most common things to be added here
  • NOTE: you should not add other packages in the monorepo here. These are added in the links section
• links are used within the ‘master project’ that laoban is looking after. * It allows laoban to set up symbolic links so that changes in one project are immediately reflected
  • These are added as dependencies to the project, with the ‘current version number’
• guards are used to control what commands are executed in this package
  • compile Should this project be compiled with the typescript compiler
  • test does this project contain any tests
  • publish should this project be published

Status

As described in Scripts some commands set status to true, which means that the success or failure of the last run will be remembered and displayed when you run laoban status.

Examples of this are laoban compile, laoban test and laoban publish.

Profiling

For general interest the times of the status scripts is recorded and can be seen with laoban profile. Each package is shown twice: once in average and once in latest.

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