kyt

Every sizable JavaScript web app needs a common foundation: a setup to build, run, test and lint your code. kyt is a toolkit that encapsulates and manages the configuration for web apps.

Upgrading to 0.5.0

Check out our migration guide and changelog

Quick Start

Install Node.js (v6.0+ required).
npm install -g kyt-cli
kyt-cli setup - This will set up your project with application and configuration files so that you can get started with kyt. Learn more about setup.
npm run dev
Check out http://localhost:3000

How it Works

kyt manages configuration for all aspects of development. It can be installed as an npm dependency into a new or existing project. kyt’s goal is to encapsulate only development tools, giving users the freedom to control their source directory and make important decisions about app architecture. kyt provides a command line interface for running all development tools.

kyt's base features include:

A Node server provided for rendering front-end page requests
Client and server hot reloading
ES-Latest stable features using Babel and babel-polyfill
CSS Module and SASS support
Inline SVG support
Style and script linter rulesets
A pre-configured test runner with Jest
Optional client-only mode for apps that already have a server

Developers design their own architecture, choosing the tools they need for rendering, styling, and handling data.

For advanced use cases, kyt enables developers to add additional tools and configuration. See our config override instructions for details, and our recipes for examples.

In an attempt to gather feedback to set future priorities, we're running a brief user survey asking: what are you using modifyWebpackConfig for?

Setting up a kyt project

kyt-cli is a utility for bootstrapping kyt projects. It can be installed globally and run to create a new project or integrate kyt with an existing project.

kyt-cli setup

See the kyt-cli documentation for more details.

Command line

kyt includes a command line program with all the commands needed for development.

Running kyt-cli setup includes these commands as scripts in your package.json:

npm run dev

Or you can run a command using node_modules/.bin/kyt command:

node_modules/.bin/kyt build

Here are the available commands:

dev starts a development environment
build compiles server and client code for production use
test runs all tests in /src
proto starts the prototyping app
lint lints src code using ESLint
lint-style lints src code using Stylelint
help shows commands and their documentation

See our CLI docs for further details.

Conventions

kyt follows a few simple conventions.

All projects must have the following structure:

  src/
    client/
      index.js
    server/
      index.js

Each index.js file acts as the build entry.

(Note that server/index.js is not required if hasServer is false in config).

If you're setting up a new project see our full list of conventions.

Configuration

kyt allows you to specify options in a kyt.config.js file. See the kyt config docs for instructions.

kyt uses Webpack to compile src code and run tests. See our recipes for extending configuration.

To configure Babel, kyt respects .babelrc files defined at the root of user projects, and provides presets to provide opinionated configurations. (If no .babelrc is defined in the user project, babel-preset-kyt-core is used.)

starter-kyts

While kyt can be easily integrated into new or existing Node projects, it is even more powerful when used with a starter-kyt. A starter-kyt offers the benefits of boilerplates while minimizing the amount of new tools to learn and maintain. The kyt-cli setup command installs any preconfigured starter-kyt git repository, adding additional dependencies and building a source directory.

See our recommended list of starter-kyts.

How to build a starter-kyt

Community supported starter-kyts can be built to support a variety of projects. See additional info on how to build a starter-kyt.

blakeyoder/kyt

kyt