yeoman init

Usage: yeoman init, yeoman init generatorName, yeoman init generatorName:subgenerator

Helps you kick-start a new web application by asking a number of questions about what you would like to include. These answers are used to scaffold out a file structure for your project.

The default init template is based on:

• HTML5 Boilerplate for the main base
• Compass Twitter Bootstrap for the SASS files as the CSS files are authored in SASS
• Twitter Bootstrap for the optional list of JavaScript plugins (optional)
• RequireJS for AMD module and script loading support (optional)
• RequireHM for experimental EcmaScript 6 module syntax support on top of RequireJS (optional)

By default we support Compass and CoffeeScript, so if your project includes any .coffee files, these will be compiled when either server or build tasks are being run.

If everything has been installed successfully, running yeoman init will present you with a welcome screen to kick off your project that looks a little like this:

        _   .--------------------------.
      _|o|_ |    Welcome to Yeoman,    |
       |_|  |   ladies and gentlemen!  |
     / \Y/ \ o_________________________|
    ||  :  |//
    o/ --- \
      _\ /_

Out of the box I include HTML5 Boilerplate, jQuery and Modernizr.

.. Invoke app ..

Please answer the following:
[?] Would you like to include Twitter Bootstrap for Compass? (Y/n)

Some of our supported custom generators include:

yeoman init bbb      # backbone boilerplate
yeoman init angular  # angularjs seed
yeoman init ember    # ember app based on ember-rails

Yeoman comes with a powerful system of Generators for scaffolding out applications using any number of boilerplates, frameworks and dependencies. Generators can be called in a project which has already been initialized with a basic Yeoman application structure OR may contain all of the files needed for the application structure themselves. By default, one can call a generator as follows:

yeoman init generatorName # e.g yeoman init angular

In the case of a Generator named "angular", a grouping sub-generator called all may exist for scaffolding out all of the files needed for a new AngularJS application. One would use this as follows:

yeoman init angular:all

The idea here is that the Generator would pull in AngularJS, its common dependencies and write out the boilerplate needed for a basic Controller and any other components the framework may require.

As we understand that it's unlikely a user will wish to manually type out the ":all" part of each generator, we support a catch-"all". If a generator has a sub-generator (grouper) called "all" we will attempt to call "all" when you try running the top-level generator. This allows a user to simply call:

yeoman init angular

and has it defer to angular:all automatically.

If one then wishes to create further AngularJS controllers, one can simply call the 'controller' sub-generator as follows:

yeoman init angular:controller controllerName

where controllerName is the name of the Controller you wish to create.

Similarly, a Backbone.js Generator may be used as follows:

yeoman init backbone

where the above would result in boilerplate for models, views, collections and a router being written to the current application directory, as well as Backbone.js and its dependencies being pulled in. One could then call the different sub-generators for the Generator as follows:

yeoman init backbone:model modelName
yeoman init backbone:collection collectionName
yeoman init backbone:view viewName
yeoman init backbone:router routerName

To list out all of the generators currently available locally, you can use the --help flag as follows:

yeoman init --help

This will print out a list of existing generators, including some of the below:

Please choose a generator below.

Yeoman:
  generator
  controller

Ember:
  ember:all
  ember:controller
  ember:model
  ember:view

Backbone:
  backbone:all
  backbone:model
  backbone:router
  backbone:view
  backbone:collection