feat: add npm template support

[Huxpro]

Add support for using npm packages as templates when creating new projects. This feature allows users to specify custom templates from npm registry with optional version control.

Key Features

• ✅ Support multiple npm template formats (npm:, @scope/package, package-name)
• ✅ Add --template-version flag for version specification
• ✅ Implement smart caching mechanism (.temp-templates/)
• ✅ Support flexible template structures (template/, templates/app/, root)
• ✅ Isolated installation to prevent workspace conflicts
• ✅ Export utility functions for downstream projects

Usage Examples

# Using npm package name
npm create rsbuild@latest my-project -- --template my-template-package

# Using scoped package
npm create rsbuild@latest my-project -- --template @scope/template-package

# Using explicit npm: prefix
npm create rsbuild@latest my-project -- --template npm:my-template-package

# With specific version
npm create rsbuild@latest my-project -- --template my-template-package --template-version 1.2.3

Implementation Details

Template Package Structure

The npm template package should have one of the following structures:

my-template-package/
├── template/              # Preferred
│   ├── package.json
│   └── src/
├── templates/
│   └── app/              # Alternative
└── (root)                # Fallback
    ├── package.json
    └── src/

Caching Strategy

• Templates with latest version are always re-installed to ensure the latest version
• Specific versions are cached in .temp-templates/ for faster reuse

API Exports

import {
  isNpmTemplate,
  resolveCustomTemplate,
  resolveNpmTemplate,
  sanitizeCacheKey,
} from 'create-rstack';

// Check if template input is an npm package
if (isNpmTemplate(templateInput)) {
  // Resolve npm template to local path
  const templatePath = resolveCustomTemplate(templateInput, version);
}

Testing

This feature has been successfully integrated and tested in:

• lynx-stack PR #2406 - create-rspeedy implementation

Related

Inspired by sparkling's npm template implementation.

Checklist

• Code follows project style guidelines
• Documentation updated (README.md)
• No breaking changes
• Tested in downstream project (create-rspeedy)

[chenjiahan]

Cloud you resolve the conflicts and fix the CI?

[Huxpro]

Rebased onto latest main and resolved conflicts. The branch was rewritten to cleanly apply the npm template feature on top of current main (including the skill selection from #117).

Changes:

• Rebased onto main (was far behind, which caused the accidental revert of feat: add first-class skill selection to create flow #117)
• Removed cross-spawn dependency (using execSync from node:child_process in template-manager instead)
• Added !fs.existsSync(srcFolder) guard so npm template resolution only triggers when local template doesn't exist
• All 43 tests pass, lint passes

[Huxpro]

@chenjiahan Conflicts resolved and CI should be fixed now. Ready for re-review!

[chenjiahan]

@codex code review

[chatgpt-codex-connector]

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[chenjiahan]

Thank you!

[chenjiahan]

Released: https://github.com/rstackjs/create-rstack/releases/tag/v2.1.0