npm start -- setup about camp

[gr2m]

Nobody will ever tell you do go away as long as you are nice to us :) it's all yours! Let us know if you need any help! Welcome at Hoodie :)

[klazich]

Good to hear! I'll get started.

[klazich]

I'll hopefully have something in the next few days. It's been a busy work week so I haven't had much time to look at it.

[gr2m]

Ignore the issue history above, this issue is up for grabs again :)

[klazich]

I'd like to give this a shot. This would be my first time working on a project outside of a online courses and challenges. If there is a different issue better suited for a beginner i'll claim that one. Or, just tell me to go the hell away and i'll understand :) Good luck with hoodie!

[gr2m]

No worries, keep us posted :)

[klazich]

So, here is what I have so far:

// a-script.js
// writes to parent package.json. Used here to set a "start" script
#!/usr/bin/env node

var fs = require('fs');
var fileName = '../../package.json';
var file = require(fileName);

file.scripts = file.scripts || {};
file.scripts["start"] = "echo \"success\"";

fs.writeFile(fileName, JSON.stringify(file, null, 2), function(err) {
    if (err) return console.log(err);
});

With this script set to run on package "install" (or any "install" lifecycle event) I can set the parent package.json "start" script.

I was thinking of using this to set the "prestart" hook to run a file that listens to process.argv for passed commands (or process.env for lifecycle events). So npm start setup can still set "start" to "hoodie" and still allow for additional "start" commands in the future.

Does that sound like the direction you want to go?

[gr2m]

Yeah that sounds good! I just realized that the idea of npm start -- setup to set the package.json’s start script doesn’t make much sense because unless it’s set we can’t run npm start 🤦 :) Sorry for the confusion. So I think you pretty much work on this issue and #3 at the same time, which is graet

I would suggest we run your script in postinstall. Three

1. var fileName = '../../package.json'; won’t work on windows, try to avoid to hard code path separators. Please use path.join instead
2. Check if the user run npm install --save hoodie or npm install -S hoodie, and only run the setup then.
3. Maybe add a console.log('Start your Hoodie app with "npm start"') to the end?

[klazich]

So use path like this?:

path.join('..','..','package.json')

Sorry, still fairly new to Node.

Also, will the package.json we want to target always be 2 above where the script executes? I was hoping there would be some other way to get the project root but didn't find anything.

[gr2m]

yes that looks right.

Your comment is right though, there might be edge cases where the target is not exactly 2 directories above the Hoodie code. Alternatively you can also do path.join(process.cwd(), 'package.json'). process.cwd() returns the full path of the directory you run the npm install command from, so it acchieves the same thing. Maybe let’s use that?

[gr2m]

Also no need to excuse, happy to help :)