Importmap generator command

[unflxw]

In the import maps documentation, we recommend that customers use the JSPM.io import map generator. This is not ideal, both because we're relying on linking a third-party online playground that may change without warning for a crucial step of the installation process, but also because the generator requires you to manually enter the libraries, and outputs a whole HTML page, from which users would usually copy specific subsets. I think this may get users confused.

A way we could address this is by having a command in @appsignal/cli that generates the importmap. This would be fairly straight-forward to do, as JSPM publishes a library for import map generation, which is what drives their online playground.

I'm thinking something like:

npx @appsignal/cli importmap

would generate the importmap for @appsignal/javascript alone, with additional desired packages passed as arguments:

npx @appsignal/cli importmap @appsignal/angular @appsignal/preact

would generate the combined importmap for @appsignal/javascript, @appsignal/angular and @appsignal/preact.

Alternatively, we might want to contribute this to @jspm/generator upstream, so users can do:

npx @jspm/generator importmap @appsignal/javascript @appsignal/angular @appsignal/preact

This may not be what they have in mind for their library though.

Either way, the idea would be to have more precise and reliable instructions, something less error-prone than "add these package names to the online generator (where?) and copy the import map (what's that?) and the ES module shims (???) to your application (where?)"

[tombruijn]

@unflxw can you create an issue about adding a CLI to the npm package to accomplish this?