Add support for remote custom templates

[benjlevesque]

Proposal for #441

Add support for custom remote templates:

tsdx create template --template https://github.com/benjlevesque/tsdx-template-basic my-app

Note: the repository must follow a specific structure

• there MUST be a template directory, containing the template files.
• there MIGHT be a template.json file, with the following structure:

{
  "name": "...",
  "dependencies": [  ],
  "packageJson": {  }
}

Template structure & approach inspired from CRA.

[jaredpalmer]

This looks good. Let’s fix tests and merge

[jaredpalmer]

Needs docs too

[benjlevesque]

Needs docs too

@jaredpalmer where do you want the docs? I didn't find docs about the existing --template option

[flaviouk]

This would be very much appreciated! @jaredpalmer ?

[emersonlaurentino]

what is missing for this PR to be dipped? tsdx is really interesting, but this feature is interesting for my usage context.

[agilgur5]

I haven't reviewed this myself as I'd need to take a good bit of time to understand the use-case of how this is beneficial beyond what you can do with template repos and haven't had that time.

Off the top of my head:

• Auto-installing unvetted/untracked dependencies seems like an avenue for some security issues (my current day job).
• Usage of synchronous fs.existsSync instead of async fs.pathExists, which I've spent a good bit of time replacing/removing everywhere in the codebase where possible previously and would not want to be re-introduced unnecessarily
• Docs, particularly as there's a requirement on repo structure (introduces a new "API" basically)

[emersonlaurentino]

At my company, we need a tool similar to tsdx and we are thinking about it, but we need to use a custom template. So this resource is essential for us. Currently, we using a Create React Library fork, but it's no legal to maintain.

[agilgur5]

At my company, we need a tool similar to tsdx and we are thinking about it, but we need to use a custom template. So this resource is essential for us.

Couldn't you do the same thing with a template repo? Either via GitHub's templates or via copy+paste. I do that myself with my repos, which are a good bit different from TSDX's templates.

[agilgur5]

Had looked into this before, but did some more digging to try to see what CRA's rationale was for this feature. Unfortunately I couldn't see a clear one:

• Here's a proposal for it. Customizing default template facebook/create-react-app#2960 (comment) asks the same question of how it's different from git clone + npm install. It was never really further responded to
• 3 different PRs were made to add varying degrees of support, but none really go over rationale 😕 : Support template dependencies facebook/create-react-app#3371, Add template support facebook/create-react-app#6514, then Add template support facebook/create-react-app#7716 which was merged