Base libraries

[jycouet]

Hi, I'm carefully watching this repo because good practices are there & sharded ;)

I would like to give my thought about the embedded libraries... (hope I can :p) I feel that a pro starter kit should have:

• as less dependency as possible
• guides to help users on how to use the kit and how to make it working it with libs

For example, you are using Font Awesome just to add few icons in menu / header... maybe we should be able to set these icons from outside of these components. And provide a guide on how to embed Font Awesome.

You are also selecting Bootstrap, I feel that it's a too "strong" choice :). So it can be an example... but not part of the starter kit.

I would like to see more something like: angular/flex-layout

//let's speak// :)

[sinedied]

Hello, your thoughts are welcome here :)

The idea behind this starter kit is to be able to kickstart any app development, for experienced and beginner teams, without having to setup anything to start (= be productive out of the box).

Yes, Bootstrap/Font Awesome is a "strong" choice, but most web developers out there know these frameworks, and beginners will be able to find a lot of examples and documentation to get started with. Most of the teams I've worked with know very little CSS and feel reassured by the presence of an UI framework to rely on.

Another point is that we aim to provide a good learning base and workflow with components, services and helpers example and to do this, we need a base to work on.

guides to help users on how to use the kit and how to make it working it with libs

While I strongly agree on this point, I feel that the better documentation is always an example: if you want to replace Font Awesome with another lib it will be straightforward as you have the example, but not including it and adding a guide instead on how to do it seems counter-productive for me.

Keep in mind that this is (only) the web/(Bootstrap) version of the starter kit, we will soon move it to a Yeoman generator that will be able to generate web/mobile variants with Bootstrap, Ionic... and maybe others ;-)

If you feel that providing a "minimal" alternative with as less dependencies as possible would be better, it will be possible once we move the project to the generator.

[jycouet]

Thank you for your comment. I agree with you, an example is always better then a doc. And this could be solved by this generator... So having a minimal base with the generator and be able to add libs and demo very easily...

Do you have an idea of when you will start this generator?

Thank you

[sinedied]

The generator is the next task I'll take on, the first version should be available around next week.

[sinedied]

In the light of https://github.com/angular-starter-kit/generator-ngx-app/issues/33, I think that having a "blank"/"minimal" option with no added dependencies (other than Angular 2 bare minimum) could be interesting so addons generators can have a whole free space to work on, like you want.

Another use case for it that is also plenty interesting would be to facilitate migration of existing projects to using the ngx-app base and tools.

[bursauxa]

@sinedied, @jycouet : now that the generator is working and #150 removes the need for UI libraries, I think we can consider this issue is solved ?

[sinedied]

For me I think it's solved, especially now that we can even just generate the tools without any templates at all if needed in addition to the --raw option.