Today I’ve published a new yeoman generator which allows you to create new ShareCoffee Add-Ons easily. (view on GitHub) If you haven’t heard of Yeoman, you should check out its website at yeoman.io.

By using such a yeoman generator, you can start building web-apps or –in this case– ShareCoffee Add-Ons in no time.

Moreover, the best advantage is: All these frameworks and tools are based on Node.js and can be used from any platform running Node.js. (Also a low budget Chromebook can run Node.js).

Once you’ve installed the Yeoman tools as described on yeoman’s website you install my latest generator using

npm install generator-sharecoffee-addon –g

Right now your system is configured for writing ShareCoffee Add-Ons. Creating a new Add-On is straight forward as described in the following shell script.

# Ensure that nodejs is installed on your system

# Install yeoman globally
npm install yo -g
# on unix systems or macs you should use sudo when installing global packages
sudo npm install yo -g #MAC/LINUX

# Install generator globally
npm install generator-sharecoffee-addon -g

# Create a project directory and go there
mkdir FooBar
cd FooBar

#Invoke yeoman and pass the generator
yo sharecoffee-addon

#execute unit tests
grunt test

#build the addon
grunt build

#build the addon and automatically generate the nuget packge (Windows Only)
grunt default
#or just
grunt

The Yeoman generator asks you a couple of questions about your new Add-On and generates all the required files and directories for you. After generating everything it automatically invokes npm install which pulls all dependencies from the web an installs them (isolated to the project directory).

I created a quick video which should demonstrate how this could look like on a Mac.