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 learnings regarding web development.
Today I read Tierney Cyren's article 11 Simple npm Tricks That Will Knock Your Wombat Socks Off. The article 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 on how to do that.
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
You can use it as a GitHub template if you need a quick way to start projects. 🙈