npm init uses npx under the hood
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This post is part of my Today I learned series in which I share all my web development learnings.
Today I read Tierney Cyren's article 11 Simple npm Tricks That Will Knock Your Wombat Socks Off. It includes a bunch of npm magic, but one included idea made me stop.
Tierney creates GitHub repositories while calling npm init using an npm init script. Avoiding the step to go to GitHub and create a new repository manually is a fabulous idea. I started reading the npm docs to learn how to do this.
While reading, I learned that npm init translates to npx when you define an initializer (npm init [initializer]). 😲
npm init foo -> npx create-foo
npm init @usr/foo -> npx @usr/create-foo
npm init @usr -> npx @usr/create
This behavior is quite handy, and it led me in a different direction. I couldn't hold it and had to publish a quick module to scaffold my future Node.js projects.
npm init @stfnjds
# or
npx @stfnjds/create
Use it as a GitHub template if you need a quick way to start projects. 🙈