CLI - init command

[webketje]

Sample usage:

metalsmith create <app> [-o <dest>] [--force]

Where app is a "registered" metalsmith starter. "Registered" means as much as "committed to a source file in the package".
The command should:

• not bloat the main NPM package or git repo with starters code
• consider . the default destination
• error when the destination is not empty (unless --force option is passed)
• support using git repositories as source. The command would proxy a git clone --depth=1 command, see also: https://www.systutorials.com/how-to-clone-a-snapshot-of-a-remote-repository-at-a-specific-branch/. This stays true to metalsmith's simplicity and avoids relying on OS-specific/optional soft (like unzip/curl etc) and offers a DX as good as npx @org/pkg without requiring NPM (which brings its own share of trouble, ie what if the used pkg mgr is yarn or pnpm?)
• (alternative) support using git repositories as source. The command would proxy a git clone --depth=1 command, see also: https://www.systutorials.com/how-to-clone-a-snapshot-of-a-remote-repository-at-a-specific-branch/. This stays true to metalsmith's simplicity and avoids relying on OS-specific/optional soft (like unzip/curl etc) and offers a DX as good as npx @org/pkg without requiring NPM (which brings its own share of trouble, ie what if the used pkg mgr is yarn or pnpm?)
• should provide a shortcut to specifying full git repo URL's. This could be like npm install's coupling to github npm i <author>/<repo> which involves text parsing, or with an alias registry (similar to metalsmith.io's plugin registry).
• (nice to have) allow cloning subdirectories?
• (optional) is there a use case for setting up a pre/post-install script? I don't really see one

It would be nice to have a signature like metalsmith create company-website & metalsmith create basic/express-app&metalsmith create :namespace/portfolio|resume

[webketje]

Second thoughts: scope is too broad. metalsmith init [--bare] [--json] <folder> will do and would set up a boilerplate with some essential core plugins like @metalsmith/layouts, @metalsmith/markdown, @metalsmith/permalinks and metalsmith-gzip and metalsmith-html-minifier, as well as some sane companion libraries like dotenv and prettier.

The --bare option would not add any plugins or content.
The --json option would output a metalsmith.json instead of a metalsmith.js.
The basic features to demonstrate are:

• loading env vars into metalsmith
• toggling the DEBUG env var
• switching between watch & single build modes
• defining common npm scripts