TCABootstrapApp - tool for bootstrapping a TCA app with Isowords-like structure

[Sajjon]

Today it takes a couple of minutes and some for beginners non-intuitive steps to fully bootstrap an app with the structure Isowords uses:

• Package.swift, Sources and Tests folders in root, exactly like an SPM Package.
• Actual app inside App folder in root, that using the dummy Package.swift "hack" in order to "break recursion" when one adds the parent folder (root) as a Local Package dependency
• Then adding AppFeature.swift as "Link Binary with Libraries"
• Add AppFeature as "Target Dependency" (to trigger re-compilation of AppFeature and its dependency when launching app)
• And potentially make edits to the structure of the App, e.g. flatten the structure one level (move up Assets.xcassets, ExampleApp.entitlements (for multi-platform apps), ExampleAppApp.swift one level - which might require edits to the Xcode project file which references ExampleApp.entitlements), delete ContentView.swift
• Edit the *App.swift file with the SwiftUI.App to be using the AppFeature

Would it not be nice to have a CLI tool to do all this? Where you input just a name of the app?

This can easily be extended with other useful functionality such as a set of common .xcconfig files, e.g. dev.xcconfig, alpha.xcconfig, beta.xcconfig, release.xcconfig for further decreasing the need of the horrible .xcodeproj file.

This Bootstrapped app project might even ship with TCA Xcode Templates for convenience?

Either this requires a sophisticated way of modifying a newly created Package.swift - but that seems non-trivial to do - or we could just bundle the Bootstrapped project with a Package.swift which defines an AppFeature and has TCA dependency added already. And potentially just change the ToBeChanged string:

let package = Package(
    name: "ToBeChanged",

using simple find replace?

And one could generate an Xcodeproj using XcodeGen maybe?

What do you guys think?

[Sajjon]

Just took a closer look at Tuist, a Tuist fixture will probably be able to power most of my ideas presented above.

[mbrandonw]

Hi @Sajjon, I'm glad you could find a set up that works for you, but I don't think this is something we want to ship directly in TCA. We don't want to be prescriptive in how people structure their features with the library. There are already a number of patterns flourishing in the community, and we have our own preferences, but their effectiveness greatly depends on team make up and size.

[mackoj]

I love the idea. I would prefer to not need to install Tuist or Xcodegen. Having a quick TCA Template tool is great.