How to use the polkadot/dev project template

Question

I'm trying to convert my project over to a structure similar to the @polkadotjs repositories, but I'm finding the dev template provided a bit difficult to parse. Specifically:

1. How do I use this repository as a base for my monorepo? Do I fork the repo and work off of it or is there a cli setup?

2. How do I use the dev template package in the repo to create a new app/package in packages? - the package.json is hard to parse. I would like to be able to build, test, lint my app/package without worrying too much about config. But I can't find any scripts that do that, only a list of bins, which is quite different from the @polkadotjs/apps repo.

Note: I am aiming for a similar setup as the @polkadotjs monorepos with one for packages (including typegen) and another for apps. Thanks!

Answer 1

The polkadot-js dev repo is not a template project for helping with using the @polkadot/* libs, rather it is a set of templates, configs and scripts that helps all the polkadot-js repos to be consistent in terms of structure and coding.

What this means internally to the polkadot-js org -

• There is a single shared config for everything - this means that each other repo (be it api, extension, apps, common, phishing, ...) just re-uses the config, be it for Babel, eslint, Typescript, etc.
• There are a set of scripts that perform build steps - this means that each polkadot-js repo just calls into @polkadot/dev for build, linting, publishing, etc.
• There are a set of shared dev dependencies for all repos - this means that instead of managing versions for all of the above all-over, it is handled in a specific location and updates can be done seamlessly (obviously code-specific deps go into their normal places inside the repos)
• Internally to this repo the src/ is never used anywhere - it is there to test the scripts/configs as changes are made. So when it builds itself correctly, it generally means it builds other polkadot-js repos correctly as well

Overall it is not meant as a scaffold for anything external to polkadot-js, it purely is driven by the need for internal, very opinionated & very rigdit, tooling for the polkadot-js repos itself. It was never meant as a cli-like tool ala react-create-scripts or something else.