What is @angular/cli?
The @angular/cli package is a command-line interface tool that you can use to initialize, develop, scaffold, and maintain Angular applications directly from a command shell. It provides commands for creating new projects, generating application and library code, performing a variety of ongoing development tasks such as testing, bundling, and deployment.
What are @angular/cli's main functionalities?
Project Scaffolding
Creates a new Angular application with a default structure by running the 'ng new' command followed by the project name.
ng new my-angular-app
Generating Components, Services, and other features
Generates a new component and its associated files by using the 'ng generate' command followed by the feature type and name.
ng generate component my-component
Building and Serving the Application
Compiles the application and starts a web server, making the app accessible in a browser. The 'ng serve' command is used for this purpose.
ng serve
Running Unit Tests
Executes the unit tests defined in the application using the 'ng test' command.
ng test
Building for Production
Compiles the application for production deployment, optimizing the build for performance and size using the 'ng build' command with the '--prod' flag.
ng build --prod
Other packages similar to @angular/cli
create-react-app
Similar to @angular/cli, create-react-app is a command-line interface for setting up new React applications. It abstracts away build configuration to a pre-configured setup, allowing developers to focus on writing code. Unlike @angular/cli, it is tailored specifically for React and does not provide an extensive set of generation commands.
vue-cli
Vue CLI is a full system for rapid Vue.js development, similar to @angular/cli for Angular. It provides project scaffolding, a development server, build tools, and a set of plugins for common tasks. Vue CLI is designed for Vue.js and offers a similar level of functionality for Vue developers.
ember-cli
Ember CLI is a command-line utility for creating, developing, and building Ember.js applications. It provides a standardized development structure and build pipeline, much like @angular/cli does for Angular. Ember CLI focuses on Ember.js and has a strong emphasis on convention over configuration.
Angular CLI
CLI for Angular applications based on the ember-cli project.
Note
The CLI is now in 1.0.
If you are updating from a beta or RC version, check out our 1.0 Update Guide.
If you wish to collaborate, check out our issue list.
Before submitting new issues, have a look at issues marked with the type: faq
label.
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
BEFORE YOU INSTALL: please read the prerequisites
npm install -g @angular/cli
Usage
ng help
Generating and serving an Angular 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 host and port used by the development server with two command-line options :
ng serve --host 0.0.0.0 --port 4201
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
ng g component new-cmp
ng g component ../newer-cmp
ng g component feature/new-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 |
Guard | ng g guard my-new-guard |
Interface | ng g interface my-new-interface |
Enum | ng g enum my-new-enum |
Module | ng g module my-module |
angular-cli will add reference to components
, directives
and pipes
automatically in the app.module.ts
. If you need to add this references to another custom module, follow this steps:
ng g module new-module
to create a new module- call
ng g component new-module/new-component
This should add the new component
, directive
or pipe
reference to the new-module
you've created.
Updating Angular CLI
If you're using Angular CLI 1.0.0-beta.28
or less, you need to uninstall angular-cli
package. It should be done due to changing of package's name and scope from angular-cli
to @angular/cli
:
npm uninstall -g angular-cli
npm uninstall --save-dev 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
npm cache clean
npm install -g @angular/cli@latest
Local project package:
rm -rf node_modules dist
npm install --save-dev @angular/cli@latest
npm install
If you are updating to 1.0 from a beta or RC version, check out our 1.0 Update Guide.
You can find more details about changes between versions in the Releases tab on GitHub.
Development Hints for working 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.
Additionally, this repository publishes several packages and we use special logic to load all of them
on development setups.
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.
To run the Angular CLI test suite use the node tests/run_e2e.js
command.
It can also receive a filename to only run that test (e.g. node tests/run_e2e.js tests/e2e/tests/build/dev-build.ts
).
As part of the test procedure, all packages will be built and linked.
You will need to re-run npm link
to re-link the development Angular CLI environment after tests finish.
Documentation
The documentation for the Angular CLI is located in this repo's wiki.
License
MIT