Prerequisites - genx

Seed and Genx

A seed is a user-friendly, buildable template by Genesis for generating an application/platform project. It can be an approved baseline for multiple applications with, of course, different owners and parameters and not just one.

It is important to note that a seed acts like a standard baseline; even though it can be modified by seed owners, it should not be. However, developers and testers are free to experiment on the applications that they build on a seed.

Correlation between a seed and Genx

Genx is a Genesis command-line utility that enables you to access a parameterised seed and generate a new project from it.

This blank-app-seed is called the Quick Start Application; it is used to create a basic Genesis project.

When you create an application with Genx, you will see seed listings in different versions. There are only two seed versions approved by Genesis:

• Seed A
• Seed A (Next/Pre-Release)

When presented, these choices enable you to build on the official Seed A baseline, which is stable and provides early access to what is being prepared. The Seed A (Next/Pre-Release) version of the official seed A is for experiment or testing only.

You should ignore any other seed version listings.

Main differences between the two seed versions

Seed A	Seed A (Next/Pre-Release)
Official seed for the actual application development	For test/experimentation purpose
Ongoing support, upstream fixes and upgrades available	No support available

Some important points to note about seeds used by Genx:

• Any local directory/project can become a seed by adding a root level .genx directory (CLI API)
• Developers may clone an existing seed to form a new one
• Developers contribute to official seeds by cloning that seed repo
• Select code owners manage merges
• Available to all Genesis users

Prerequisites

• Recommended Operating system : Windows 10 Pro
• Node.js version 16

Launching genx

Open a terminal on your machine and launch the CLI tool using this:

Terminal

npx @genesislcap/genx@latest

This command presents you with a sequence of choices for creating and configuring applications.

Using genx

First, you'll be prompted to supply your Genesis artifactory credentials.

Next, you just need to respond to the questions, which depend on the task you initially select. For example, if you want to create a new application:

Terminal

? Please select an option: create application - Generates a local application.

Enter the local directory where you want to create the app (where relevant, the default for these options is the letter displayed in upper case; this will be applied if nothing is entered):

Terminal

? Create a app in current directory (Y/n)

... and then give it an appropriate name (e.g. alpha):

Terminal

? App name alpha

Next, select the Seed application you wish to base your project on:

Terminal

? App seed

> Genesis Quick Start Application

Choose whether to overwrite existing files. Note that the default is No.

Terminal

? Overwrite existing files (y/N)

This will start the download of dependencies.

Front-end prompts

Once that has been completed, you will be prompted for configuring the front-end part of the project.

The first prompt is the package scope. The default is genesislcap.

Terminal

? Package scope (without the @) genesislcap

The next question is about the package name. You can use alpha.

Terminal

? Package name alpha

The next is whether you want to create a design system. The default is Yes.

Terminal

? Create design system (Yes/no)

Finally, whether you want to set an API host. The default is Yes.

Terminal

? Set API Host (Yes/no)

Back-end prompts

The next prompts concern the back-end part of the application.

The first prompt is for the group id:

Terminal

? Group Id global.genesis

... and this is followed by the application version:

Terminal

? Application Version 1.0.0-SNAPSHOT

Press Enter and you should be greeted by a message saying that the application was created successfully.

Open the project in IntelliJ to start building. But note - it takes a few minutes to set up the folder structure, so be patient.

Here's a quick overview of the generated application's folder structure:

Above, we have expanded the client folder. This contains all the UI-related projects.

The server folder follows the same structure. This contains all the server-side projects.

note

The Quick Start Application seed will generate:

• the web project structure
• the jvm project structure

Workspaces

Workspaces are top-level client monorepos that contain various packages, such as components, micro front-ends, design systems, and at least one application. All these packages can be versioned and released independently. This set-up provides an enhanced developer experience.

The workspace generator automates the following steps for you:

• It creates a local workspace from a local or remote seed and configures it.
• It persists the information captured during your CLI session within the workspace filesystem for future use.

Workspaces and application filesystem

Your apps are local to workspaces; they don't exist in isolation.

After you have created a workspace, your workspace filesystem should look something like this (depending on the seed).

./packages/
├── apps
│   ├── demo
├── components
├── design-systems
│   └── alpha
├── micro-frontends
├── services
└── utils

This is a monorepo containing multiple packages. Each package can be released independently.

CLI command-language syntax

To learn about available CLI commands run npx @genesislcap/genx@latest -h.

The command syntax is:

npx @genesislcap/genx@latest commandNameOrAlias requiredArg [optionalArg] [options]

Boolean options

Boolean options have two forms:

• --this-option sets the flag to true

• --no-this-option sets it to false

If neither option is supplied, the flag remains in its default state.