Cleanup the high number of ways to "start" a CouchApp with couchapp

[BigBlueHat]

Right now, you can us any of the following commands each with their own unique way of doing things...

couchapp init

Directory contents:

.couchappignore  .couchapprc

couchapp startapp

🐛 Fails with error 2015-11-13 10:41:58 [ERROR] couchapp error: Can't start an app, name or path is missing, but generates the same as couchapp init above.

couchapp startapp NAME

2015-11-13 10:44:30 [INFO] c:\Users\Benjamin\Documents\GitHub\anno-mail\temp\NAME created.
Creates a NAME directory who's contents are:

.couchappignore  .couchapprc  _attachments  _id  lists  shows  updates  views

couchapp startapp . NAME

🐛 This is supposed to support passing in a COUCHAPPDIR param before NAME, but . is unsupported...apparently.

Outputs 2015-11-13 10:46:51 [INFO] NAME created. with a NAME directory (which it shouldn't do) which matches the above contents.

couchapp generate NAME

🐛 This one seems to attempt to use the current directory (if one's unspecified) rather than auto-magically creating a directory for NAME in the way that startapp does.

Outputs 2015-11-13 10:48:56 [ERROR] couchapp error: Can't create a CouchApp in c:\current\directory: Cannot create a file when that file already exists

Trying couchapp generate . NAME checks . against the options lists (which makes sense given the param list. Outputs 2015-11-13 10:50:11 [ERROR] couchapp error: Can't generate . in your couchapp. generator is unknown

🐛 This also failed...again not doing what startapp did:

$ couchapp generate app NAME
2015-11-13 10:51:32 [ERROR] couchapp error: Can't create a CouchApp in c:\current\directory: Cannot create a file when that file already exists

This worked, however.

$ couchapp generate app NAME NAME
2015-11-13 10:51:54 [INFO] NAME generated.

But the directory contents are different than startapp's:

README.md  _attachments  _id  couchapp.json  language  lists  shows  updates  vendor  views

Proposal

• deprecate startapp
• "upgrade" init to replace startapp and generate app
  • have it use the generate app system with the --template option
• (possibly) deprecate generate app -- keep it focused on generating the other things
• simplify base template for initialized app, so it matches what startapp does now--so, no jquery, no vendor, no .js, .html, or .css

[BigBlueHat]

Here's a comparison of the 3 varied outputs we have now.

|~generate-app/
| |~_attachments/
| | |~script/
| | | `-app.js
| | |~style/
| | | `-main.css
| | `-index.html
| |~lists/
| |~shows/
| |~updates/
| |~vendor/
| | `~couchapp/
| |   |~_attachments/
| |   | |-jquery.couch.app.js
| |   | |-jquery.couch.app.util.js
| |   | |-jquery.couchForm.js
| |   | |-jquery.couchLogin.js
| |   | |-jquery.couchProfile.js
| |   | |-jquery.mustache.js
| |   | `-md5.js
| |   `-metadata.json
| |~views/
| | `~recent-items/
| |   `-map.js
| |-_id
| |-couchapp.json
| |-language
| |-README.md

• lots of "extra" stuff
• lacks .couchapprc and .couchappignore

|~init/
  |~.couchappignore
  |~.couchapprc

• has only the two things generate app is missing

`~startapp/
  |~.couchappignore
  |~.couchapprc
  |~_attachments/
  |~lists/
  |~shows/
  |~updates/
  |~views/
  `-_id

• more "ideal" start point--just a stub of what you actually need to begin building a CouchApp

This last bit is what I think we should keep:

• rename it to couchapp init (from startapp)
• make it avoid existing files and directories with matching names
• make it work on a subdirectory: couchpp init new-app currently fails with directory does not exist error

[iblislin]

Hmmm.. I think we should redefine the goal of generate app --template. I cannot determine the difference between clone.

If generate app means doing cloning really, I will agree to deprecate it, and extend the ability of clone.

[iblislin]

@BigBlueHat Hmm... I re-read your post again and dug into our codebase.

I think the original design is we provide different level of starting a couchapp.

original design says that:

• init for creating the essential element for a couchapp
• startapp: i need a skeleton (also, it's an alias of $ couchapp generate startapp)
• generate app: i need a boilerplate! I'm familiar to work with my favorite (custom) vendor

So the stuff get more and more from init to gen app.

It's time to decide that do we need to support 3 level of init?
If yes, we can integrate them into init. Maybe make init accept more options.
if no, we can implement your proposal -- rename startapp to init and make it better.