update

Be scalable. Update is a new developer framework and CLI for automating updates of any kind in code projects.

What does it do?

All updating is accomplished using plugins called updaters, which are run by command line or API, and can be installed globally, locally, or created in a local updatefile.js.

You can create your own updaters using Update's API, or install updaters using npm, to do things like:

enforce conventions across all of your projects
instantly update an old or inherited project to your latest personal preferences (convert tabs to spaces, convert from jshint to eslint or the other way around, or any other detail)
reformat code to meet your standards
convert a config file to a different format (json to yaml, yaml to json, etc)
update files that are typically excluded from build cycles, and are often forgotten about after they're created. For example:
- fix dates in copyrights, licenses and banners
- remove deprecated fields from project manifests
- update settings in runtime config files, preferences in dotfiles
after initializing a new project with a project generator, like generate or Google's Yeoman, you can "normalize" all of the generated files to use your own preferences

Why update?

be more productive: Update makes you more productive by eliminating time spent on things that can be automated, but typically aren't since they don't need to be done often, don't fit into the build cycle or a project's deliverables, or they're usually updated by hand. As code projects mature, time spent on these things tend to stay linear or increase as the size of a community grows. And this only compounds which each new project under your stewardship.
your way, instantly: updaters can be published to and installed from npm, but you can also easily create your own personal updaters. Once you're updaters are setup, projects under your maintenance will convert to the the conventions you prefer in milliseconds.
plugin ecosystem: any plugins that work with Base applications will work with Update. Which means you can use assemble, verb, and generate plugins, to name a few.

Who should use Update?

anyone who cares about having consistency across all of their projects
developers or organizations with many projects under their stewardship
agencies or consultants who maintain and/or create client projects and would like to reduce time spent on maintainance

Getting started

The following instructions are intended to provide a basic demonstration of how Update works. Visit the links after this section for more information.

1. Install update

To use Update's CLI, update must first be installed globally with npm:

$ npm install --global update

This adds the update command to your system path, allowing it to be run from anywhere.

2. Install an "updater"

To see how updaters work, install updater-example:

$ npm install --global updater-example

3. Create "example.txt"

In the current working directory, create an empty file named example.txt.

4. Run

As a habit, when using update make sure your work is committed, then run:

$ update example

This appends the string foo to the contents of example.txt. Visit the updater-example project for additional steps and guidance.

Next steps

Browse the documentation
Learn about updaters
Learn about the built-in updaters

Init

Tell Update's CLI to automatically run certain updaters every time the update command is given:

$ update init

You can run this command whenever you want to update your preferences, like after installing new updaters.

$ update help

  Usage: update <command> [options]

  Command: updater or tasks to run

  Options:

    --config, -c      Save a configuration value to the `update` object in package.json
    --cwd             Set or display the current working directory
    --data, -d        Define data. API equivalent of `app.data()`
    --disable         Disable an option. API equivalent of "app.disable('foo')"
    --enable          Enable an option. API equivalent of "app.enable('foo')"
    --global, -g      Save a global configuration value to use as a default
    --help, -h        Display this help menu
    --init, -i        Prompts for configuration values and stores the answers
    --option, -o      Define options. API equivalent of `app.option()`
    --run             Force tasks to run regardless of command line flags used
    --silent, -S      Silence all tasks and updaters in the terminal
    --show <key>      Display the value of <key>
    --version, -V     Display the current version of update
    --verbose, -v     Display all verbose logging messages

  Examples:

    # run updater "foo"
    $ update foo

    # run task "bar" from updater "foo"
    $ update foo:bar

    # run multiple tasks from updater "foo"
    $ update foo:bar,baz,qux

    # run a sub-generator from updater "foo"
    $ update foo.abc

    # run task "xyz" from sub-generator "foo.abc"
    $ update foo.abc:xyz

    Update attempts to automatically determine if "foo" is a task or updater.
    If there is a conflict, you can force update to run updater "foo"
    by specifying its default task. Example: `$ update foo:default`

Features

unparalleled flow control: through the use of updaters, sub-updaters and tasks
templates, scaffolds and boilerplates: update a single file, initialize an entire project, or provide ad-hoc "components" throughout the duration of a project using any combination of templates, scaffolds and boilerplates.
any engine: use any template engine to render templates, including handlebars, lodash, swig and pug
prompts: asks you for data when it can't find what it needs, and it's easy to customize prompts for any data you want.
data: gathers data from the user's environment to populate "hints" in user prompts and render templates
streams: interact with the file system, with full support for gulp and assemble plugins
smart plugins: Update is built on base, so any "smart" plugin can be used
stores: persist configuration settings, global defaults, project-specific defaults, answers to prompts, and so on.
much more!

Discovering updaters

Find updaters to install by searching npm for packages with the keyword updateupdater
Visit Update's GitHub org to see the updaters maintained by the core team

Discovering plugins

Plugins from any applications built on base should work with Update (and can be used in your updater):

base: find base plugins on npm using the baseplugin keyword
assemble: find assemble plugins on npm using the assembleplugin keyword
generate: find generate plugins on npm using the generateplugin keyword
templates: find templates plugins on npm using the templatesplugin keyword
[update][update-plugin]: find update plugins on npm using the updateplugin keyword
verb: find verb plugins on npm using the verbplugin keyword

Authoring updaters

Visit the updater documentation guide to learn how to use, author and publish updaters.

More information

Community

Are you using Update in your project? Have you published an updater? Want to share your Update project with the world? Here are some suggestions:

If you get like Update and want to tweet about it, please use the hashtag #updatejs
Get implementation help on StackOverflow (pluse use the update tag in questions)
Gitter Discuss Update with us on Gitter
If you publish an updater, thank you! To make your project as discoverable as possible, please add the keyword updateupdater to package.json.

Related projects

You might also be interested in these projects:

assemble: Assemble is a powerful, extendable and easy to use static site generator for node.js. Used… more | homepage
base: base is the foundation for creating modular, unit testable and highly pluggable node.js applications, starting… more | homepage
generate: The Santa Claus machine for GitHub projects. Scaffolds out new projects, or creates any kind… more | homepage
verb: Documentation generator for GitHub projects. Verb is extremely powerful, easy to use, and is used… more | homepage

Contributing

Pull requests and stars are always welcome. For bugs and feature requests, please create an issue.

Please read the contributing guide for avice on opening issues, pull requests, and coding standards.

Running tests

Install dev dependencies:

$ npm install -d && npm test

Author

Jon Schlinkert

License

This file was generated by verb, v0.9.0, on July 01, 2016.

Update

Update is a new developer framework and CLI for automating updates of any kind in code projects. If you know how to use assemble, generate or verb, you'll know how to use update.