🛠 Tooling: can --bin be used to create CLI tools?

[johnnyreilly]

Bug Report Checklist

• [X] I have tried restarting my IDE and the issue persists.
• [X] I have pulled the latest main branch of the repository.
• [X] I have searched for related issues and found none that matched my issue.

Overview

I write CLI tools with TypeScript. I've started trying to use CTA for this and realised that either the bin functionality doesn't create all the src/bin code that CTA itself has built in. I'm assuming this is deliberate?

Either way, I'm just about to (for the second time) copy paste src/bin code into a project I'm starting as it's so gosh darn useful!

Does CTA create this stuff if you just do it the right way? I can see a --bin option here:

https://github.com/JoshuaKGoldberg/create-typescript-app/blob/main/docs/Options.md#optional-options

But it doesn't appear to do anything more than package.json fiddling. Am I getting this right?

Additional Info

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[JoshuaKGoldberg]

That's correct, it doesn't create the bin/ file. The contents of that file are up to you based on how you'd like to structure your API. This would be a good thing to mention in the docs!

[johnnyreilly]

Awesome - I'll try and add that soon. Follow up question:

I've now scaffolded out my second CLI app borrowing heavily from CTAs bin internals (you can see it here: https://github.com/johnnyreilly/ado-npm-auth-lite) and I've found all the bin stuff really handy!

Is there a desire that bin mode could include this code deliberately, rather than the copy / pasta that I've been doing?

[JoshuaKGoldberg]

I think it'd be best to not 😞. Having a standard unified set would be really nice. But this is edging into enforcing opinions on how folks structure their apps. Decisions like "export a bin from src/bin/index.ts" is a pretty specific thing.

[github-actions[bot]]

:tada: This is included in version v1.73.5 :tada:

The release is available on:

• GitHub releases
• npm package (@latest dist-tag)

Cheers! 📦🚀