generate-readme

Generate a README.md using answers to prompts and data from the environment, like package.json, .git config, etc. This generator can be run by command line if Generate is installed globally, or you can use this as a plugin or sub-generator in your own generator.

TOC

• What is "Generate"?
• Command line usage
  • Install globally
  • Running generate-readme
  • Help
  • Running tasks
• Tasks
• Running multiple generators
  • generate-dest
• API usage
  • Install locally
  • Register as a plugin
  • Run tasks
• Customization
  • Destination directory
  • Overriding templates
• About
  • Related projects
  • Contributing
  • Running tests
  • Author
  • License

(TOC generated by verb using markdown-toc)

Example

Templates are customizable and can be overridden.

What is "Generate"?

Generate is a command line tool and developer framework for scaffolding out new GitHub projects using generators and tasks. Answers to prompts and the user's environment can be used to determine the templates, directories, files and contents to build. Support for gulp, base and assemble plugins, and much more.

For more information about Generate:

• Visit the generate project
• Visit the generate documentation
• Find generators on npm (help us author generators)

Command line usage

Install globally

Installing the CLI

To run the readme generator from the command line, you'll need to install generate globally first. You can do that now with the following command:

$ npm install --global generate

This adds the gen command to your system path, allowing it to be run from any directory.

Install generate-readme

You may now install this module with the following command:

$ npm install --global generate-readme

Running generate-readme

You should now be able to run generate-readme with the following command:

$ gen readme

What will happen?

Running $ gen readme will run the generator's default task, which will:

1. prompt you for any information that's missing
2. render the file using your answers
3. generate the readme to the current working directory.

Conflict detection

This generator will prompt you for feedback before overwrite existing files. You can set the destination to a new directory if you want to avoid the prompts, or avoid accidentally overwriting files with unintentional answers => 'Oops! I meant "no!"'.

What you should see in the terminal

If completed successfully, you should see both starting and finished events in the terminal, like the following:

[00:44:21] starting ...
...
[00:44:22] finished ✔

If you do not see one or both of those events, please let us know about it.

Help

To see a general help menu and available commands for Generate's CLI, run:

$ gen help

Running tasks

Generators use tasks for flow control. Tasks are run by passing the name of the task to run after the generator name, delimited by a comma.

Example

For instance, the following will run generator readme, task bar:

$ gen readme:foo
       ^       ^
generator     task

Default task

If a task is not explicitly passed Generate's CLI will run the default task.

Tasks

readme:readme

Generate a README.md in the current working directory.

Example

$ gen readme:readme

Visit Generate's documentation for tasks.

Running multiple generators

Generate supports running multiple generators at once. The following generator(s) work well with generate-readme:

generate-dest

Run generate-dest before generate-readme to prompt for the destination directory to use for generated files.

$ gen dest readme

Example

API usage

Use generate-readme as a plugin in your own generator.

Install locally

Install with npm:

$ npm install --save generate-readme

Register as a plugin

Inside your own generator:

module.exports = function(app) {
  // register generate-readme as a plugin
  app.use(require('generate-readme'));
};

Run tasks

Programmatically run tasks from generate-readme:

module.exports = function(app) {
  // register generate-readme as a plugin
  app.use(require('generate-readme'));

  // run the `default` task on generate-readme
  app.task('foo', function(cb) {
    app.generate('generate-readme', cb);
  });

  // or run a specific task on generate-readme 
  // (where `foo` is the name of the task to run)
  app.task('bar', function(cb) {
    app.generate('generate-readme:foo', cb);
  });
};

Visit the generator docs to learn more about creating, installing, using and publishing generators.

Customization

The following instructions can be used to override settings in generate-readme. Visit the Generate documentation to learn about other ways to override defaults.

Destination directory

To customize the destination directory, install generate-dest globally, then in the command line prefix dest before any other generator names.

For example, the following will prompt you for the destination path to use, then pass the result to generate-readme:

$ gen dest readme

Overriding templates

You can override a template by adding a template of the same name to the templates directory in user home.

For example, to override the package.json template, add a template at the following path ~/generate/generate-readme/templates/README.md, where ~/ is the user-home directory that os.homedir() resolves to on your system.

About

Related projects

You might also be interested in these projects:

• generate-gitignore: Generate a .gitignore file from the command line when Generate's CLI is installed globally, or… more | homepage
• generate-license: Generate a license file for a GitHub project. | homepage
• generate-package: Generate a package.json from a pre-defined or user-defined template. This generator can be used from… more | homepage

Contributing

Pull requests and stars are always welcome. For bugs and feature requests, please create an issue.

Running tests

Install dev dependencies:

$ npm install -d && npm test

Author

Jon Schlinkert

• github/jonschlinkert
• twitter/jonschlinkert

License

Copyright © 2016, Jon Schlinkert. Released under the MIT license.

This file was generated by verb, v0.9.0, on July 09, 2016.