Angular CLI

Prototype of a CLI for Angular applications based on the ember-cli project.

Note

This project is very much still a work in progress.

The CLI is now in beta. If you wish to collaborate while the project is still young, check out our issue list.

Before submitting new issues, have a look at issues marked with the type: faq label.

Webpack update

We changed the build system between beta.10 and beta.14, from SystemJS to Webpack. And with it comes a lot of benefits. To take advantage of these, your app built with the old beta will need to migrate.

You can update your beta.10 projects to beta.14 by following these instructions.

Prerequisites

Both the CLI and generated project have dependencies that require Node 6.9.0 or higher, together with NPM 3 or higher.

Table of Contents

• Installation
• Usage
• Generating a New Project
• Generating Components, Directives, Pipes and Services
• Updating Angular CLI
• Development Hints for hacking on Angular CLI
• License

Installation

BEFORE YOU INSTALL: please read the prerequisites

npm install -g @angular/cli

Usage

ng help

Generating and serving an Angular2 project via a development server

ng new PROJECT_NAME
cd PROJECT_NAME
ng serve

Navigate to http://localhost:4200/. The app will automatically reload if you change any of the source files.

You can configure the default HTTP port and the one used by the LiveReload server with two command-line options :

ng serve --host 0.0.0.0 --port 4201 --live-reload-port 49153

Generating Components, Directives, Pipes and Services

You can use the ng generate (or just ng g) command to generate Angular components:

ng generate component my-new-component
ng g component my-new-component # using the alias

# components support relative path generation
# if in the directory src/app/feature/ and you run
ng g component new-cmp
# your component will be generated in src/app/feature/new-cmp
# but if you were to run
ng g component ../newer-cmp
# your component will be generated in src/app/newer-cmp

You can find all possible blueprints in the table below:

Scaffold	Usage
Component	ng g component my-new-component
Directive	ng g directive my-new-directive
Pipe	ng g pipe my-new-pipe
Service	ng g service my-new-service
Class	ng g class my-new-class
Interface	ng g interface my-new-interface
Enum	ng g enum my-new-enum
Module	ng g module my-module

Updating Angular CLI

To update Angular CLI to a new version, you must update both the global package and your project's local package.

Global package:

npm uninstall -g angular-cli @angular/cli
npm cache clean
npm install -g @angular/cli@latest

Local project package:

rm -rf node_modules dist # use rmdir on Windows
npm install --save-dev @angular/cli@latest
npm install
ng update

Running ng update will check for changes in all the auto-generated files created by ng new and allow you to update yours. You are offered four choices for each changed file: y (overwrite), n (don't overwrite), d (show diff between your file and the updated file) and h (help).

Carefully read the diffs for each code file, and either accept the changes or incorporate them manually after ng update finishes.

The main cause of errors after an update is failing to incorporate these updates into your code.

You can find more details about changes between versions in CHANGELOG.md.

Development Hints for hacking on Angular CLI

Working with master

git clone https://github.com/angular/angular-cli.git
cd angular-cli
npm link

npm link is very similar to npm install -g except that instead of downloading the package from the repo, the just cloned angular-cli/ folder becomes the global package. Any changes to the files in the angular-cli/ folder will immediately affect the global @angular/cli package, allowing you to quickly test any changes you make to the cli project.

Now you can use @angular/cli via the command line:

ng new foo
cd foo
npm link @angular/cli
ng serve

npm link @angular/cli is needed because by default the globally installed @angular/cli just loads the local @angular/cli from the project which was fetched remotely from npm. npm link @angular/cli symlinks the global @angular/cli package to the local @angular/cli package. Now the angular-cli you cloned before is in three places: The folder you cloned it into, npm's folder where it stores global packages and the Angular CLI project you just created.

You can also use ng new foo --link-cli to automatically link the @angular/cli package.

Please read the official npm-link documentation and the npm-link cheatsheet for more information.

License

MIT