SPRO / Starter Project CLI

Starter Project CLI creates a perfect Gulp development environment for everyone within a few minutes.

Starter Project CLI Logo - Folder with start button and CLI word

Starter Project CLI, or SPRO (pronounces es-pro), is a command line interface that could save you a vast amount of time that you usually spend on configuring your project. SPRO's mission is to set up a perfect development environment by learning about your project architecture and then setting up Gulp tasks for all your needs.

SPRO should be considered as a boilerplate of predefined Gulp tasks. SPRO would install Gulp tasks for processing the following file types:

HTML (pug)
CSS (Sass)
JavaScript (es6)
Graphic (PNG, JPEG, SVG, GIF)
Fonts
Favicons

The tasks include compiling, lintering, formatting, compressing, and transforming your source file to produce the most optimized production files.

Info: If you would like to add a Gulp task, feel free to open a pull request, or request a feature by creating a new issue.

Resources
Installation
Getting started
Gulp tasks
Configuration file
Path Placeholders
Command
Task Configuration
Questions
Dependenciest
Support
ToDo

Resources

Besides this documentation, you could learn more about SPRO by reading the following articles:

Also, you could watch the full course about SPRO on Skillshare (registration required):

Setting up development environment with Gulp

Installation

You could use SPRO as a global or local package.

To install the package locally, run:

npm install starter-project-cli --save

To install the package globally, run:

npm install --global starter-project-cli --save

Getting started

After successful installation, you could run the spro command. If you have installed the package locally, you could initialize the package by running the following command:

node_modules/.bin/spro start

If you have installed the package globally, you could initialize the package by running the following command:

spro start

SPRO would prompt you to ask a few questions about the project structure.

Starter Project CLI in action

Once you answer all questions, SPRO would do two things:

copy all required files (Gulp task files and configuration files), and
prepare a command for installation of dependencies required for the project.

Warning: Note that the installation process could last a few minutes.

Gulp tasks

In the gulpfile.js folder you could find all Gulp task files and configuration files.

There are four available major Gulp tasks:

Task	Description
`default`	the task for running all the tasks (useful for more thorough development process)
`build`	the task for running all tasks with the exit process (useful for Netlify builds, for example)
`dev`	the task for running only essential tasks (useful for basic development process)
`clean`	the task for deleting compiled code.

And there are three optional Gulp tasks for versioning (available only you choose SEMVER option):

Task	Description
`bumpPatch`	the task for bumping patch versions of the `package.json` file
`bumpMinor`	the task for bumping minor versions of the `package.json` file
`bumpMajor`	the task for bumping major versions of the `package.json` file

Pro tip: Run gulp --tasks to see all available Gulp tasks.

Configuration files

Site configuration is stored in the data/site.json file. Make sure to update the configuration file per your needs. If you want to access the data from pug templates, make sure to update the src/layout/variables.pug file with the correct configuration.

If you want more control over your Gulp tasks, you could find the Gulp configuration files for every single Gulp task in the gulpfile.js folder.

.starter-project.json is the main Gulp configuration file in which you could find all global settings for Gulp tasks. Avoid editing this file manually.

{
  {
  "proot": "./",
  "src": "src",
  "dist": "dist",
  "sync": {
    "run": true
  },
  "html": {
    "run": true,
    "src": "html",
    "data": true,
    "inline": true,
    "dist": "",
    "pug": false,
    "minify": true,
    "lint": true
  },
  "css": {
    "run": true,
    "src": "scss",
    "dist": "css",
    "sass": true,
    "minify": true,
    "autoprefix": true,
    "sourcemaps": true,
    "lint": true
  },
  "js": {
    "run": true,
    "src": "js",
    "dist": "js",
    "uglify": true,
    "lint": true,
    "sourcemaps": true
  },
  "gfx": {
    "run": true,
    "src": "gfx",
    "dist": "gfx"
  },
  "fonts": {
    "run": true,
    "src": "fonts",
    "dist": "fonts"
  },
  "favicon": {
    "run": true
  },
  "critical": {
    "run": true
  },
  "kss": {
    "run": true,
    "dist": "docs/styleguide"
  },
  "sassdoc": {
    "run": true,
    "dist": "docs/sass"
  },
  "jsdoc": {
    "run": true,
    "dist": "docs/js"
  },
  "bump": {
    "run": true
  }
}

Avoid editing this file manually, unless you know what you are doing. Run spro start command again instead.

See more about individual configuring tasks in the Task Configuration section.

Path Placeholders

SPRO provides path placeholders for easier configuration. All path placeholders would be replaced with settings from the main config file, .starter-project.json file.

Use path placeholders to avoid hardcoding paths in the project.

Here is the list of all available path placeholders:

Placeholder	Replacement
`helpers.proot`	project root path
`helpers.source`	project source path
`helpers.dist`	project destination path
`config.html.src`	project HTML source path
`config.html.dist`	project HTML source path
`config.css.src`	project CSS source path
`config.css.dist`	project CSS destination path
`config.js.src`	project JavaScript source path
`config.js.dist`	project JavaScript destination path

Command

SPRO package has only one command:

spro start, spro s.

Also, you could run spro --version to check the version of the package.

Task Configuration

Every task has its own configuration file.

BrowserSync Configuration

The default BrowserSync configuration is defined as follows:

{
  "port": 8088,
  "server": {
    "baseDir": ""
  }
}

You could see all available options on BrowserSync the npm page.

Favicon Configuration

The default favicon configuration is defined as follows:

{
  "run": true,
  "src": "helpers.source/config.html.src/_assets/favicon.pug",
  "dest": "helpers.source/config.html.src/_assets"
}

To make the favicon task work, you should visit the RealFaviconGenerator and run the wizard. At the end of the process, you should copy the setting and put them in the .favicon-data.json file under gulpfile.js directory.