[cli] Option to disable launching storybook after installation

[yusitnikov]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe.

Hello! I'm working on a script that automatically creates a React project with Storybook, and the way to add Storybook to the project is to run npx storybook@latest init --yes. Unfortunately, this command always launches storybook after installing, which is not appropriate for a CLI script that is supposed to do other things after installing Storybook.

Describe the solution you'd like

Suggest adding an option to the CLI script that will disable launching Storybook automatically, e.g. npx storybook@latest init --no-launch

Describe alternatives you've considered

Another option I considered is to import @storybook/cli package as an npm dependency in the script, and use its API to install Storybook without launching it afterwards. Unfortunately, the package doesn't provide a public API for that, and generally doesn't look like it's supposed to be used this way.

Are you able to assist to bring the feature to reality?

no

Additional context

No response

[Turkitutu]

I really need this feature

[joeslazaro]

What I did for my own Storybook automation project is to skip init and instead just install the packages that it normally installs, and then set up the script to run storybook build. It works fine for me since I don't need support for any of the init CLI flags, like changing the parser, builder, or package manager.

[valentinpalkovic]

You can see here that the dev command only executes when the env variables CI and IN_STORYBOOK_SANDBOX aren't set to 'true'. Setting one of the env variables to 'true' should skip starting Storybook after init.

[fastfrwrd]

This workaround definitely does work, but it does seem that it would be better to have an explicit option that does this, since the CI environment variable has a well-defined meaning that may or may not apply to the situation we want to use this feature in.

For example, I want to invoke the storybook CLI on behalf of a user as part of a project scaffold tool that needs to run the storybook CLI in a spawned process and then apply a codemod to the files storybook created; that is all happening on a user's machine, presumably, so it's a smell to me that the only way we could opt into that is to set the CI environment variable, which is meant to indicate that we're not on a user's machine.

My ideal version of this (which I think I'll create a PR for) would have the same default behavior as now, with the added optional CLI option of --no-dev, which takes precedence if set (similar to the --no-open option on start).

[valentinpalkovic]

That makes sense to me. Would you like to provide a PR with the implementation?

[fastfrwrd]

opened #26918

[yusitnikov]

The CI env var worked like a charm, thank you!

[valentinpalkovic]

@yusitnikov The --no-dev flag was implemented and you can use it as documented here: https://storybook.js.org/docs/api/cli-options