feat: added a 'common' config base, with more docs (#849)

## PR Checklist

- [x] Addresses an existing open issue: fixes #835
- [x] That issue was marked as [`status: accepting
prs`](https://github.com/JoshuaKGoldberg/create-typescript-app/issues?q=is%3Aopen+is%3Aissue+label%3A%22status%3A+accepting+prs%22)
- [x] Steps in
[CONTRIBUTING.md](https://github.com/JoshuaKGoldberg/create-typescript-app/blob/main/.github/CONTRIBUTING.md)
were taken

## Overview

Describes the new "common" base as what I imagine most repositories
would want, and gives it the `hint: "recommended"` instead of the
"everything" base. And adds some more test coverage to
`augmentOptionsWithExcludes`.

I think Knip might technically belong in the "everything" base per the
current descriptions... but gosh darn is it so useful. I wonder what's
better: including it in "common" so everyone gets the benefit? Or
pushing it to "everything" so as a reward for trying that one out? For
now I think the former is more likely to be beneficial.

```plaintext
│
◆  How much tooling would you like the template to set up for you?
│  ○ everything  The most comprehensive tooling imaginable: sorting, spellchecking, and more!
│  ● essentials  Bare starters plus testing and automation for all-contributors and releases. (recommended)
│  ○ minimum     Just bare starter tooling: building, formatting, linting, and type checking.
│  ○ prompt      (allow me to customize)
└
```

Author: JoshuaKGoldberg

.github/DEVELOPMENT.md

@@ -93,7 +93,7 @@ As described in the `README.md` file and `docs/`, this template repository comes
 
 Each follows roughly the same general flow:
 
-1. `bin/index.ts` uses `bin/mode.ts` determines which of the three setup scripts to run
+1. `bin/index.ts` uses `bin/mode.ts` to determine which of the three setup scripts to run
 2. `readOptions` parses in options from local files, Git commands, npm APIs, and/or files on disk
 3. `runOrRestore` wraps the setup script's main logic in a friendly prompt wrapper
 4. The setup script wraps each portion of its main logic with `withSpinner`

README.md

@@ -27,7 +27,7 @@
 </p>
 
 Note that this template is early stage, opinionated, and not endorsed by the TypeScript team.
-It sets up a _lot_ of tooling out of the box.
+It can be configured to set up a _lot_ of tooling out of the box.
 Each of the included tools exists for a good reason and provides real value.
 
 If you don't want to use any particular tool, you can always remove it manually.
@@ -50,7 +50,7 @@ Use the corresponding docs page to get started:
 ## Explainer
 
 This template is available for anybody who wants to set up a Node application using TypeScript.
-It sets up the following tooling for you:
+It can set up the following tooling for you:
 
 - [**All Contributors**](https://allcontributors.org): Tracks various kinds of contributions and displays them in a nicely formatted table in the README.md.
 - [**ESLint**](https://eslint.org): Static analysis for JavaScript code, configured with [typescript-eslint](https://typescript-eslint.io) for TypeScript code and other general-use plugins.

docs/FAQs.md

@@ -21,6 +21,19 @@ Each of the included tools exists for a good reason and provides real value.
 
 If you don't want to use any particular tool, you can always remove it manually.
 
+### What determines which "base" a tool goes into?
+
+The four bases correspond to what have seemed to be the most common user needs of template consumers:
+
+1. **Minimum**: Developers who just want the barest of starting templates.
+   - They may be very new to TypeScript tooling, or they may have made an informed decision that the additional tooling isn't worth the complexity and/or time investment.
+   - Tooling in this base is only what would be essential for a small TypeScript package that can be built, formatted, and linted.
+2. **Common**: The common case of users who want the minimum tooling along with common repository management.
+   - Tooling added in this base should be essential for a TypeScript repository that additionally automates useful GitHub tasks: contributor recognition, release management, and testing.
+3. **Everything**: Power users (including this repository) who want as much of the latest and greatest safety checks and standardization as possible.
+
+Note that users can always customize exactly with portions are kept in with `--base` **`prompt`**.
+
 ### Which tools can't I remove?
 
 The following pieces of this template's tooling don't have options to be removed:

src/shared/options/augmentOptionsWithExcludes.test.ts

@@ -45,7 +45,54 @@ describe("augmentOptionsWithExcludes", () => {
 		expect(actual).toBe(options);
 	});
 
-	it("uses base without prompting when base is provided manually", async () => {
+	it("uses the 'common' base without prompting when provided manually", async () => {
+		const options = {
+			...optionsBase,
+			base: "common",
+		} satisfies Options;
+
+		const actual = await augmentOptionsWithExcludes(options);
+
+		expect(actual).toEqual({
+			...options,
+			excludeCompliance: true,
+			excludeLintJson: true,
+			excludeLintMd: true,
+			excludeLintPackageJson: true,
+			excludeLintPackages: true,
+			excludeLintPerfectionist: true,
+			excludeLintSpelling: true,
+			excludeLintYml: true,
+		});
+	});
+
+	it("uses the 'minimum' base without prompting when provided manually", async () => {
+		const options = {
+			...optionsBase,
+			base: "minimum",
+		} satisfies Options;
+
+		const actual = await augmentOptionsWithExcludes(options);
+
+		expect(actual).toEqual({
+			...options,
+			excludeCompliance: true,
+			excludeContributors: true,
+			excludeLintJson: true,
+			excludeLintKnip: true,
+			excludeLintMd: true,
+			excludeLintPackageJson: true,
+			excludeLintPackages: true,
+			excludeLintPerfectionist: true,
+			excludeLintSpelling: true,
+			excludeLintYml: true,
+			excludeReleases: true,
+			excludeRenovate: true,
+			excludeTests: true,
+		});
+	});
+
+	it("uses the 'everything' base without prompting when provided manually", async () => {
 		const options = {
 			...optionsBase,
 			base: "everything",

src/shared/options/augmentOptionsWithExcludes.ts

@@ -1,13 +1,23 @@
 import * as prompts from "@clack/prompts";
+import chalk from "chalk";
 
 import { filterPromptCancel } from "../prompts.js";
 import { InputBase, Options } from "../types.js";
 
-const exclusionDescriptions = {
+interface ExclusionDescription {
+	hint: string;
+	label: string;
+	uncommon?: true;
+}
+
+type ExclusionKey = keyof Options & `exclude${string}`;
+
+const exclusionDescriptions: Record<ExclusionKey, ExclusionDescription> = {
 	excludeCompliance: {
 		hint: "--exclude-compliance",
 		label:
 			"Add a GitHub Actions workflow to verify that PRs match an expected format.",
+		uncommon: true,
 	},
 	excludeContributors: {
 		hint: "--exclude-contributors",
@@ -17,6 +27,7 @@ const exclusionDescriptions = {
 	excludeLintJson: {
 		hint: "--exclude-lint-json",
 		label: "Apply linting and sorting to *.json and *.jsonc files.",
+		uncommon: true,
 	},
 	excludeLintKnip: {
 		hint: "--exclude-lint-knip",
@@ -25,28 +36,34 @@ const exclusionDescriptions = {
 	excludeLintMd: {
 		hint: "--exclude-lint-md",
 		label: "Apply linting to *.md files.",
+		uncommon: true,
 	},
 	excludeLintPackageJson: {
 		hint: "--exclude-lint-package-json",
 		label: "Add npm-package-json-lint to lint for package.json correctness.",
+		uncommon: true,
 	},
 	excludeLintPackages: {
 		hint: "--exclude-lint-packages",
 		label:
 			"Add a pnpm dedupe workflow to ensure packages aren't duplicated unnecessarily.",
+		uncommon: true,
 	},
 	excludeLintPerfectionist: {
 		hint: "--exclude-lint-perfectionist",
 		label:
 			"Apply eslint-plugin-perfectionist to ensure imports, keys, and so on are in sorted order.",
+		uncommon: true,
 	},
 	excludeLintSpelling: {
 		hint: "--exclude-lint-spelling",
 		label: "Add cspell to spell check against dictionaries of known words.",
+		uncommon: true,
 	},
 	excludeLintYml: {
 		hint: "--exclude-lint-yml",
 		label: "Apply linting and sorting to *.yaml and *.yml files.",
+		uncommon: true,
 	},
 	excludeReleases: {
 		hint: "--exclude-releases",
@@ -55,16 +72,14 @@ const exclusionDescriptions = {
 	},
 	excludeRenovate: {
 		hint: "--exclude-renovate",
-		label: "Add a Renovate config to dependencies up-to-date with PRs.",
+		label: "Add a Renovate config to keep dependencies up-to-date with PRs.",
 	},
 	excludeTests: {
 		hint: "--exclude-tests",
 		label:
 			"Add Vitest tooling for fast unit tests, configured with coverage tracking.",
 	},
-} as const;
-
-type ExclusionKey = keyof typeof exclusionDescriptions;
+};
 
 const exclusionKeys = Object.keys(exclusionDescriptions) as ExclusionKey[];
 
@@ -85,19 +100,33 @@ export async function augmentOptionsWithExcludes(
 		options.base ??
 		filterPromptCancel<InputBase | symbol>(
 			await prompts.select({
+				initialValue: "common" as InputBase,
 				message: `How much tooling would you like the template to set up for you?`,
 				options: [
 					{
-						hint: "recommended",
-						label: "Everything! 🙌",
+						label: makeLabel(
+							"everything",
+							"The most comprehensive tooling imaginable: sorting, spellchecking, and more!",
+						),
 						value: "everything",
 					},
 					{
-						label: "Just the bare essentials, please.",
+						hint: "recommended",
+						label: makeLabel(
+							"common",
+							"Bare starters plus testing and automation for all-contributors and releases.",
+						),
+						value: "common",
+					},
+					{
+						label: makeLabel(
+							"minimum",
+							"Just bare starter tooling: building, formatting, linting, and type checking.",
+						),
 						value: "minimum",
 					},
 					{
-						label: "Allow me to customize.",
+						label: makeLabel("prompt", "(allow me to customize)"),
 						value: "prompt",
 					},
 				],
@@ -108,6 +137,16 @@ export async function augmentOptionsWithExcludes(
 		case undefined:
 			return undefined;
 
+		case "common":
+			return {
+				...options,
+				...Object.fromEntries(
+					exclusionKeys
+						.filter((exclusion) => exclusionDescriptions[exclusion].uncommon)
+						.map((exclusion) => [exclusion, options[exclusion] ?? true]),
+				),
+			};
+
 		case "everything":
 			return options;
 
@@ -151,3 +190,7 @@ export async function augmentOptionsWithExcludes(
 			};
 	}
 }
+
+function makeLabel(label: string, message: string) {
+	return [chalk.bold(label), message].join("\t ");
+}

src/shared/options/readOptions.ts

@@ -165,7 +165,12 @@ export async function readOptions(args: string[]): Promise<OptionsParseResult> {
 const optionsSchema = z.object({
 	author: z.string().optional(),
 	base: z
-		.union([z.literal("everything"), z.literal("minimum"), z.literal("prompt")])
+		.union([
+			z.literal("common"),
+			z.literal("everything"),
+			z.literal("minimum"),
+			z.literal("prompt"),
+		])
 		.optional(),
 	createRepository: z.boolean().optional(),
 	description: z.string().optional(),

src/shared/types.ts

@@ -17,7 +17,7 @@ export interface PartialPackageData {
 	repository?: { type: string; url: string } | string;
 }
 
-export type InputBase = "everything" | "minimum" | "prompt";
+export type InputBase = "common" | "everything" | "minimum" | "prompt";
 
 export interface Options {
 	author?: string;