Developing from the Command Line

As I have mentioned, the developer workflow has changed quite a bit.  In case you haven't heard or kept up, it looks something like this:

• From the command line, use Yeoman to generate a new project  > yo webapp
• From the command line, initialize the folder as a new Git repository  > git init
• From the command line, open the new project using an Editor of your choice  > code .

As you can see, much more is being done from the command line.  New tools such as cmder are being used to gain quick access to command windows for Powershell/Node/etc to assist and speed up this flow.  Cmder is great because it has transparency, allows you to have multiple tabs, and is easily summoned and hidden away using CTRL+`.

For my task today I decided to initialize a Git repository, add a file, make changes to the file, and commit those files to a Git branch all from the command line.  I wanted to use Powershell to create the project folder and the initial file so that I could tick my "One thing per day" goal of using PS for something at least once per day!

I found the New-Item (alias: ni) cmdlet which allows you to create a variety of item types.  To create a new folder, give it the -ItemType of 'directory' and then the name of the folder that you wish to create.  E.g.

> New-Item -ItemType directory myNewDirectory

I then went ahead and used Git to initialize a repo in the new folder:

> git init

New-Item can also be used to create files, just give it the name of the file that you want to create:

> ni "file1.txt"
> notepad "file1.txt"

This adds a new file named file1.txt and opens it in Notepad.

> git add .
> git commit -a -m "Adding file1.txt"

This will commit the changes of to your Git repo.  It's easy to visualize what's happening in Git Extensions:

The folder can be opened using VS Code using code and a dot "." to open the folder that you are currently in:

> code .

After playing around with Git for a while, I wanted to delete my test folder so I typed Remove- and pressed CTRL-SPACE to find out if Powershell had a Remove-Item command

And sure enough it did.  So I finished with the following PS command to blow away my test folder:

> rm "\testdir" -force

What I Learned:

• When using cmder, I can start typing the name of a command and then use CTRL+SPACE to find all matching cmdlets