Add an option to skip testing and linting packages/configurations when creating a new project.

[mkvlrn-cm42]

Is there an existing issue that is already proposing this?

• I have searched the existing issues

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe it

Not related to a problem, just a suggestion to add more flexibility when creating new projects with the CLI.

Describe the solution you'd like

I would like to be able to use options in the CLI when creating a new project in order to not add features that are currently added to all projects.

The features would be testing (no Jest, no Supertest, no testing configuration, no automatic spec creation, no test scripts in package.json) and linting (no Eslint and no Eslint configuration).

Teachability, documentation, adoption, migration strategy

Something like nest new --skip-testing --skip-linting to not install the packages and skip the configurations would be excellent.

It wouldn't change the default behavior of the CLI, adding just flags for an opt-in, more customized CLI experience.

What is the motivation / use case for changing the behavior?

• Reduce "friction" to clean up the project of unused configurations/packages when using different tools such as Vitest/PactumJS for testing or Biome for linting
• Make the CLI less opinionated when it comes to features not directly related to Nest (like it doesn't exactly push TypeORM out of the box, even presenting a help section for Prisma in the docs)
• I know this isn't a big reason, but having the ability to prototype something without too many "extras" feels like a better experience to me

[micalevisk]

as of now you can run npm init nest in order to generate a really tiny standard nestjs project. See the code here: https://github.com/micalevisk/create-nest

example

├── nest-cli.json
├── package.json
├── package-lock.json
├── src
│   ├── app.module.ts
│   └── main.ts
├── tsconfig.build.json
└── tsconfig.json

1 directory, 7 files

{
  "name": "foo",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "",
  "main": "dist/src/main",
  "scripts": {
    "build": "nest build",
    "start:dev": "nest start --watch",
    "start:prod": "node ."
  },
  "keywords": [],
  "author": "Micael Levi L. C.",
  "license": "ISC",
  "dependencies": {
    "@nestjs/common": "^10.3.7",
    "@nestjs/core": "^10.3.7",
    "@nestjs/platform-express": "^10.3.7"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "@nestjs/cli": "^10.3.2",
    "@types/node": "^20.12.7",
    "typescript": "^5.4.5"
  }
}

[mkvlrn-cm42]

@micalevisk this is VERY impressive, I love it!

The one thing I would like to suggest is to make it aware of pnpm, because, even though running pnpm create nest worked just fine, it installed dependencies with npm.

Edit: @micalevisk issue created

[micalevisk]

I'd suggest:

--skip-tests   Do not generate testing files for the new project.

inspired by Angular CLI.

This would set generateOptions.spec to false as well

[tbouasli]

I would love to see this in nestjs, I use biome and have to delete prettier and biome on all my repositories, and it gets annoying quickly with large monorepos.

[giancarlo-dm]

We shouldn't be "forced" to use prettier, eslint and jest (specially). There should be an option that only installs and set up the minimum as possible to be able to start coding. I have to always delete everything and remove the dependencies on my own, which is really annoying, specially if I need to prototype or build a proof of concept.

[micalevisk]

@giancarlo-dm you can use npm init nest/npm create nest/yarn create nest/pnpm create nest in this case. But I agree with you.

[giancarlo-dm]

@giancarlo-dm you can use npm init nest/npm create nest/yarn create nest/pnpm create nest in this case. But I agree with you.

@micalevisk Interesting, but unfortunately it is not working for me (I use Windows) and got the following error:

/bin/bash: C:\Users\gianc\AppData\Local\pnpm-cache\dlx\55dbf6e053d7ae826cbf138a16a784b48cb065b3a956b6c89afdb6bb1fa3a644\195236718d3-40e8\node_modules\.bin\..\.pnpm\[email protected]\node_modules\create-nest\create-nestjs-from-scratch.sh: No such file or directory

[EdwinOliveira]

@giancarlo-dm you can use npm init nest/npm create nest/yarn create nest/pnpm create nest in this case. But I agree with you.

@micalevisk Interesting, but unfortunately it is not working for me (I use Windows) and got the following error:

/bin/bash: C:\Users\gianc\AppData\Local\pnpm-cache\dlx\55dbf6e053d7ae826cbf138a16a784b48cb065b3a956b6c89afdb6bb1fa3a644\195236718d3-40e8\node_modules\.bin\..\.pnpm\[email protected]\node_modules\create-nest\create-nestjs-from-scratch.sh: No such file or directory

What terminal are you using? Powershell also wasn't working for me. I tried gitbash and it worked fine :)