Add addons/tools after generation through CLI

[Pandawan]

I'm submitting a...

• Bug report
• Feature request
• Documentation issue or request

Current behavior

Right now, after having created a project, there is no way to automatically add a tool/addon (i.e. prettier). You have to manually go through and install the package, set it up. You can, of course, create a new project and see all the files that reference that specific package, but that is tedious/complicated and could be made much more efficient/simple.

Expected behavior

Similar to the update method asking you which files you want to update and which tools/addons you want to install, there should be a CLI command (i.e. ngx add <name>) which would run the tool/addon-generation part of the update command, and similarly ask you which files you want to override/merge, etc.

Although you might sometime need to setup other things manually, having this as a starting base would be very helpful.

[sinedied]

This one is a tough question I have been thinking since the introduction of schematics in ng CLI, but I haven't made my mind yet on what we should do in this regard.

Some thoughts for discussion:

• Schematics are made to do exactly that, but:

  • are more complex to maintain
  • are more suited for small, targeted changes: it would mean that we would need to convert each choice of the generator into a separate schematic. While more flexible, I'm afraid that this would become a nightmare to test and maintain
  • are tied to JS/TS/Angular ecosystem: it would be more difficult to integrate backend generators for Java, C# etc

• On the other hand, Yeoman is nice & easy for bootstrapping project, but not really for updates or individual, target changes. It's not perfect, but has been proven to be at least manageable until now.

• Mixing schematics & the actual Yeoman approach would be the dream combo: Yeoman for orchestration and base app bootstrapping + targeted schematics for some parts (tools, auth, features etc), but:

  • it would need significant effort to implement, though it's possible to do it "1 schematic at a time" for progressive migration
  • testing tools needs to be updated properly at the same time to avoid regressions

As for me, I don't have the bandwidth to undertake a change this significant in the architecture of this tool, but if anyone wants to take a look at this (even in a POC branch) I'm not against it.
Just integrating an existing schematic from the community into the "regular" generator process could be a nice first step.

@bursauxa @creal73 any thougths?