`spacetime init` rewrite #3366

drogus · 2025-10-07T10:54:12Z

This is a draft of the new functionality for spacetime init. In order to run it with built-in templates you have to set the path to the config file:

export SPACETIMEDB_CLI_TEMPLATES_FILE=crates/cli/.init-templates.json

In the future it will fetch the list from GH.

A few notes:

the previous functionality of spacetime init does not work at the moment
the code needs a bit more cleanup and tests before merging
there is a bit of a mix in how we generate empty server and client projects. For Rust we use the existing way of generating. For TypeScript we clone an empty project from the repo. I wanted to play with both ways of doing things, and I'm still not sure which is better. Generation in Rust means that the generated code will match the CLI version and not necessarily whatever is in Git. On the other hand, for the builtin templates we will be fetching the newest version from GH, which I guess might also not what we want, ie. we probably want only stable templates. More discussion is needed here
we use spacetimedb directory for the server files
I don't particularly like the inability to disable interactive mode easily. We discussed disabling it by default if all of the required arguments are passed, but I don't think it's feature proof. For example, if someone relies on a non-interactive mode, and we add a new required argument, instead of printing a message missing --foo, we will automatically launch interactive mode, which is harder to debug. That's why I think I'd prefer to implement --non-interactive argument
it's kind of hard to keep the legacy behaviour. If you don't pass any arguments, we go into interactive mode. In the legacy version, we would print required arguments. If someone passes --lang or --project-path explicitly, I guess we could run the legacy workflow, but not sure if it's worth it, as the command was marked as unstable anyway
the project path defaults to the project name, but I think we should probably replace change whitespaces to dashes, or at least ask for the project path with the project name being the default (or both)

It was added first when the requirements were different. At the moment we only allow to chose server-lang if template is not provided

…uilding

…us/spacetime-init

Signed-off-by: Tyler Cloutier <[email protected]>

cloutiertyler · 2025-10-24T02:16:47Z

crates/cli/src/subcommands/init.rs

+    }
+
+    let cursorrules_content = embedded::get_cursorrules();
+    let cursorrules_path = project_path.join(".cursorrules");


the cursorrules_content should go in .cursor/rules/spacetime-rules.mdc. (kebab case is preferred)

.cursorrules is deprecated

cloutiertyler · 2025-10-24T15:52:41Z

docs/docs/modules/c-sharp/index.md


 ```bash
-spacetime init --lang csharp my-project-directory
+spacetime init --non-interactive --name my-spacetimedb-project --server-lang csharp my-project-directory


Several suggestions:

--name my-spacetimedb-project my-spacetimedb-directory is a little redundant, let's make it so that the parameter is called --project-path instead and that parameter tells you where you're going put the project. Let's make the positional argument the project name (more in line with what spacetime publish does). Let's make it so that if you do not specify a project path, it creates a directory in the current directory with the same name as the project name.

Let's leave off --non-interactive in the docs, so it might actually go into interactive mode for some stuff.

Let's rename --server-lang to --lang (I'm less sure about this change. I would be okay to keep it --server-lang if we made the other changes).

So this line would become:

spacetime init --lang csharp my-spacetimedb-project

jdetter

Some UX questions/nits about github templates, I'm still reviewing

jdetter · 2025-10-24T16:10:48Z

crates/cli/src/subcommands/init.rs

+            template_type: TemplateType::GitHub,
+            server_lang: None,
+            client_lang: None,
+            github_repo: Some(template_str.to_string()),


Should we check to see if this looks like a URL here? Like if someone just mistypes a template name we will end up here too no?

jdetter · 2025-10-24T16:14:38Z

crates/cli/src/subcommands/init.rs

+        format!("https://github.com/{}", repo_input)
+    } else {
+        anyhow::bail!("Invalid repository format. Use 'owner/repo' or full URL");
+    };


If someone wants to use a template from a private repo or they just want to use SSH auth I think it would be nice to support that here. e.g. if someone passed this as their template URL:

# Either of these should work [email protected]/clockworklabs/PrivateTemplate ssh://[email protected]/clockworklabs/PrivateTemplate

jdetter · 2025-10-24T16:18:08Z

crates/cli/src/subcommands/init.rs

+}
+
+fn clone_github_template(repo_input: &str, target: &Path) -> anyhow::Result<()> {
+    let repo_url = if repo_input.starts_with("http") {


This wouldn't catch URLs like:

github.com/clockworklabs/MyTemplate

Also do we want to support pointing to local repo as well? Something like:

../clockwork/SomeTemplateImTesting

crates/cli/src/subcommands/init.rs

jdetter · 2025-10-24T16:44:36Z

crates/cli/src/subcommands/init.rs

+    }
+}
+
+fn slugify(name: &str) -> String {


Do we not just want to use the convert_case crate for this instead? Then you can just:

name.to_case(Case::Kebab)

Plus we already use this dependency anyway

jdetter · 2025-10-24T16:47:07Z

crates/cli/src/subcommands/init.rs

+            1 => Some("pnpm"),
+            2 => Some("yarn"),
+            3 => Some("bun"),
+            _ => None,


I think if the user selected "other" here we should prompt them for the package manager they want to use

It's not quite so simple, I think in this case they are doing something that 99.9% of users won't do, so we should leave them to their own devices.

Let's remove the "other" option then?

jdetter

More review

jdetter · 2025-10-24T16:50:34Z

crates/cli/src/subcommands/init.rs

+            println!("  {} - {}", template.id, template.description);
+        }
+        println!();
+        loop {


This loop isn't used

drogus self-assigned this Oct 7, 2025

drogus requested review from bfops, cloutiertyler and jdetter as code owners October 7, 2025 10:54

drogus marked this pull request as draft October 7, 2025 10:55

drogus force-pushed the drogus/spacetime-init branch 18 times, most recently from c022d34 to ea0f0f7 Compare October 15, 2025 20:52

implement new spacetime init command

e536cc3

drogus force-pushed the drogus/spacetime-init branch from ea0f0f7 to e536cc3 Compare October 15, 2025 20:53

drogus added 3 commits October 15, 2025 23:11

Fix lints

4fa6d6e

Format typescript code

2e0dfba

Update eslint config

cc118cc

drogus force-pushed the drogus/spacetime-init branch from 10f14ee to cc118cc Compare October 16, 2025 11:49

Small chnages in init args

b0410e8

drogus added 6 commits October 23, 2025 13:50

Remove client-lang option from init

c2468b3

It was added first when the requirements were different. At the moment we only allow to chose server-lang if template is not provided

Add missing templates list

34646d0

remove unused functions

7351cc4

Fix cli reference

a54e088

Fix lints

9807a43

update cargo.lock

db22a7f

drogus force-pushed the drogus/spacetime-init branch from dfa4da7 to db22a7f Compare October 23, 2025 13:24

drogus and others added 15 commits October 23, 2025 16:02

Fix init in smoketests

bc8c8da

Fix reference so spacetime init

f0b7b87

Update the name of both the server and the client for known languages

fa4a72b

Fix checking for login in non-interactive mode

de65fd1

Try updatring cargo.lock manually

bb624dc

Fix smoketests

f24767c

Change bitflags version

38c1248

Try to fix smoke tests

0cd8a15

Small fixes and changes

48566b1

Don't use symlinks for templates and copy files into the crate when b…

e3cf84f

…uilding

Merge remote-tracking branch 'origin/drogus/spacetime-init' into drog…

01d3186

…us/spacetime-init

add basic-c-sharp client

988e256

Exclude spacetimedb directory from c# clients

654edff

Small fix for windows

9c1677e

Merge branch 'master' into drogus/spacetime-init

7b944bc

Signed-off-by: Tyler Cloutier <[email protected]>

cloutiertyler reviewed Oct 24, 2025

View reviewed changes

Change bitflags version to 2.10.0

55e47fc

cloutiertyler reviewed Oct 24, 2025

View reviewed changes

jdetter reviewed Oct 24, 2025

View reviewed changes

Fixed several bugs on windows

879e9d3

spacetime init rewrite #3366

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`spacetime init` rewrite #3366

`spacetime init` rewrite #3366