Creating your typical file structure is probably the most boring task when it comes to starting a new project. I looked at Yeoman and a couuple generators but none looked like how I want my directories and files to be structured. Rather than rolling my own it hit me that a small shell script would suffice.

After a few minutes of tinkering I came up with a script that I named mkproj. It basically consists of a simple case statement and a couple of “guarded” loops that creates everything that I need to get started.

#!/usr/bin/env sh

case "$1" in
  "node")
    for dir in {test,lib}; do
      if [ ! -d "$dir" ]; then
        mkdir "$dir"
      fi
    done; unset dir

    for file in {README.md,index.js,test/index.js}; do
      if [ ! -f "$file" ]; then
        printf "\n" > "$file"
      fi
    done; unset file
  ;;
  # Other project structures...
  *)
    echo "Invalid option."
  ;;
esac

The reason why I’m using printf "\n" > instead of touch is so that I can use the script with Git Bash and still retain the right file format, i.e. with Unix line endings.

To use the node scaffolder all I need to do is type mkproj node and hit Enter. I’m far from being a shell scripting expert so there’s probably a more efficient way of doing this and it’s certainly not a full on replacement for other tools, but it works for me.