[RFC] Add make:bundle command

[maidmaid]

To create a reusable bundle is a little boring. SensioGeneratorBundle have a command for this. Why not have a similar command here?

[flip111]

There are quite some templates for bundle that need to be checked if it's still best practice for symfony 4 https://github.com/sensiolabs/SensioGeneratorBundle/tree/master/Resources/skeleton/bundle

[maidmaid]

As a reminder, here the files generated by SensioGeneratorBundle:

src/Acme/BlogBundle
├── AcmeBlogBundle.php
├── Controller
│   └── DefaultController.php
├── DependencyInjection
│   ├── AcmeBlogExtension.php
│   └── Configuration.php
├── Resources
│   ├── config
│   │   └── services.yml
│   └── views
│       └── Default
│           └── index.html.twig
└── Tests
    └── Controller
        └── DefaultControllerTest.php

[maidmaid]

We should provide the minimum. So, DefaultController.php and index.html.twig are already handled by a maker, I think we can remove them. Same thing with DefaultControllerTest.php. According to Best Practices for Reusable Bundles and essential files, the next structure should look well:

.
├─ .gitignore
├─ composer.json
├─ phpunit.xml.dist
├─ AcmeBlogBundle.php
├─ README.md
├─ LICENSE
├── DependencyInjection
│   ├── AcmeBlogExtension.php
│   └── Configuration.php
└─ Resources
    ├─ config
    │   └── services.yml
    └─ doc
       └── index.md

[flip111]

Drop some additional files that were also not generated by sensio. I think it's a bit too much to preselect a version control system and a package manager and a testing framework. Let's keep it to just the symfony files.

<your-bundle>/
├─ AcmeBlogBundle.php
├─ README.md
├─ LICENSE
├─ DependencyInjection/
│   ├─ AcmeBlogExtension.php
│   └─ Configuration.php
└─ Resources/
    ├─ config/
    │  └─ services.yaml
    └─ doc/
       └─ index.rst

[maidmaid]

it's a bit too much to preselect a version control system

We're talking about reusable bundle; Git will be used in 99% of cases.

and a package manager

composer.json file is essential, at least for autoloading.

and a testing framework.

It's maybe more relevant to generate phpunit.xml.dist when we make unit/functional test for the very first time.

[flip111]

We're talking about reusable bundle; Git will be used in 99% of cases.

It's just too far of a stretch to assume that it will be a reusable bundle in it's own repository. People can just start the bundle in their code base and break it out later, at which point adding a .gitignore is a small effort which only occurs seldomly.

composer.json file is essential, at least for autoloading.

There is already a composer.json in the root of the symfony project if you are using the default symfony installation method.

[flip111]

I started working on a PR. But i ran into some architect difficulties of which i don't know why certain choices were made. The MakerCommand delegates interact to the Bundle classes

https://github.com/symfony/maker-bundle/blob/master/src/Command/MakerCommand.php#L86

but it doesn't pass $output which is used in the interact method of the sensio bundle https://github.com/sensiolabs/SensioGeneratorBundle/blob/master/Command/GenerateBundleCommand.php#L116

If i add this parameter i also have to change all the other Bundle classes even if they don't use output ...

another thing is that i need to add a getQuestionHelper method to the MakerCommand because i need to instantiate a custom QuestionHelper https://github.com/sensiolabs/SensioGeneratorBundle/blob/master/Command/Helper/QuestionHelper.php

Please advice on the $output parameter issue.

[KoriSeng]

Command cannot create the bundle in src folder due to the App namespace taking up the src folder. so if this command is ever implemented as a way for developers to create third party bundles on symfony 4. the bundles have to be created at the root folder

[alexiswbr]

I created a "bundles" folder at the root, and in composer.json I added this line "": "bundles/":

"autoload": {
    "psr-4": {
        "App\\": "src/",
        "": "bundles/"
    }
},

This works well, it could be a good solution

[flip111]

@7thcubic bundle as sub-namespace of App namespace is not going to work ?

[KoriSeng]

Lets say i am developing a shared bundle for Acme company, the namespace would start with Acme, if the bundle was created in src folder in symfony4, based on the PSR-4 it would require the namespace to start with App\Acme, how would that work?

so bundles have to be out of source folder if the prefix of the bundle namespace does not start with App.

There is nothing preventing you from creating App prefixed bundles, its just that when a developer is trying to write a shared bundle you can place it in src like how it was done in sf3.

[codedmonkey]

@7thcubic That's a solution but if you perform composer diagnose you can see this is not recommended for performance issues. Aside from that, I am 100% against the idea of a new bundle still generating a PSR-0 style directory structure.

@weaverryan I'm interested to hear a comment on the issue raised by @flip111:

The MakerCommand delegates interact to the Bundle classes but it doesn't pass $output which is used in the interact method of the sensio bundle

How is the interaction going to work? I've been wanting to make this PR as well but how the interaction is going to work is still unclear, and I'm assuming you have an idea of how you would like it to work. Hopefully you could shed some light on this, so more people can try to help with the more complicated commands.

[javiereguiluz]

Here's an unpopular comment: what if we close this proposal as "won't fix"?

First, we can't generate "app bundles" because that concept is completely deprecated in Symfony.

Second, we could generate "reusable or third-party bundles" ... but generating a reusable bundle inside a Symfony application is "wrong". When you want to publish the bundle in some public or private repo, you should remove all the Symfony app files unrelated to the bundle.

What do you think?

[flip111]

@javiereguiluz are you saying it's better not to generate a bundle skeleton out of a principled way how the new symfony is setup? Creating a bundle is still in symfony 4.* though. For technical reasons i think it would still be good to automate this part for "Rapid Bundle Development". The part where you have to remove all the symfony app files are not on that page (or i can not find it, maybe it's somewhere??) .. Sounds to me there are more steps involved now, perhaps another opportunity to automate that part as well.

[codedmonkey]

I can certainly agree with your reasons since the point of this bundle is to create clean code. A bundle doesn't have to be more than a single class, all other configuration is optional. The old generator created a bulky example skeleton for bundles but the documentation seems to be good enough for anyone who is trying to attempt to make a bundle.

[bocharsky-bw]

I think having this command would be cool, at least for reusable third-party bundles. We may bootstrap directory structure with some files and correct namespaces - it's a routine work that we can avoid that will reduce simple typos. And we can require to specify a path to a directory from users where this bundle should be stored, recommending to store it outside of their Symfony project. Users still may generate the bundle inside their Symfony project, but this way they would need to configure autoloading manually in their composer.json

[mahono]

I think people could live without a make:bundle command.

But: The make commands need to be able to put files in any directory. Currently it seems that they can only put stuff into src/ which is a good start.. but bundle developers need a bit more flexibility.

[c33s]

i would love to see make:bundle comming back.

the documentation seems to be good enough for anyone who is trying to attempt to make a bundle.

its not a cool task to copy and paste from the docs.

generating a reusable bundle inside a Symfony application is "wrong"

yes, but the developing of a bundle in its own namespace in a bundle directory parallel to the current application is then possible making rapid development better while containing the option to not tie the code to the current app.

B) The generated code itself may change between minor releases. This will allow us to continuously improve the generated code!

having a good skeleton to start with makes things always easier and the generated code is according the best pratice as it is going to be improved over the time.

i would also prefer to have the command generate more/all files of a bundle, like the generator before, because it is so much easier to have one command generate it all and quickly delete what is not needed instead of calling multiple commands and repeat all the inputs of namespace, ...

[afolabiolayinka]

Still no make:bundle?

[tacman]

Although Ryan's screencast is still the best source for how to create a reusable bundle (https://symfonycasts.com/screencast/symfony-bundle), it's still way too much effort to create one correctly. One advantage of a "make:bundle" command would be that it could create a "best practices" structure. A few prompts regarding the what the bundle exposes (services, commands, entities, etc.) would go a long way to make more bundles available.

Of course, it's complicated, because often the tools are built in an application and then moved to a bundle. Autowiring for bundles is disabled (and deprecated) for now, so creating the services.xml file might be helpful. Maybe there are even a few steps: make:bundle:setup, and then make:bundle:command, make:bundle:service? And if @weaverryan updates that tutorial, please consider adding more details to creating a recipe -- although I should be able to figure it out, it's often a roadblock.

I have 2 semi-working bundles on github now, that I often use for my own projects but are too unpolished to share. I'd love to feel more confident that they're set up correctly.

[jrushlow]

I'm closing this for now. Currently, I do not foresee plans to create a new make:bundle command. If you think about it, bundles should originate from their own project, not within an existing project.

[codedmonkey]

If you think about it, bundles should originate from their own project, not within an existing project.

I never created a bundle without a Symfony project to use it for. Maybe that's semantically true but there's no documentation on how you should test your bundle actually works in Symfony projects.

It could solve a lot of misconceptions about bundles, for example the idea you need a XML file for service definitions. Defining services from the extension or through a PHP configurator should be the recommended approaches but documentation about the Bundle system still date back from 3.x days so PHP configurators aren't even mentioned.

Thanks for providing closure though, if somebody wants this consider building a BundleMakerBundle.

[yceruto]

For the record, you can now create a Symfony bundle using Composer create-project command, a template repo and a composer plugin:

composer create-project yceruto/bundle-skeleton <your-bundle-name>