vue add should work with plugins that don't have a generator

[anthonygore]

What problem does this feature solve?

vue add is probably the command that most people will want to use when adding new plugins to their project. Currently, it throws an error for plugins where there is no generator. It seems odd that the user would have to know to use npm i -D <plugin> instead for plugins with no generator.

What does the proposed API look like?

vue add will install the plugin then detect if the plugin has a generator, and if not, skip the invoke.

[Akryum]

Currently, a vue-cli plugin without generator is invalid. vue-cli plugins are meant to be invoked when added to a project, so I don't see the point of this.
Maybe your are confusing them with generic npm package (even if they contain Vue plugins).

[anthonygore]

It’s says in the docs that a plugin “can contain a generator” which I assume to mean is optional

https://github.com/vuejs/vue-cli/blob/dev/docs/plugin-dev.md#generator

Maybe I am confused about something here, but from what I understand, if the plugin only needs to tweak webpack config why should it need a generator?

[anthonygore]

Further up in the docs it’s made clear that a generator is optional https://github.com/vuejs/vue-cli/blob/dev/docs/plugin-dev.md#cli-plugin

[Akryum]

I mean vue add is meant to install and invoke a vue-cli plugin. It's like a better vue invoke.

[LinusBorg]

@Akryum I see your point, but that's not clear from the command's description. While it says "install a plugin and invoke its generator" its not clear that a missing generator will break the command.

So i think we should have invoke handle this gracefully. We could either skip the invokation silently or log a message to the console like <plugin> doesn't contain a generator, skipping invokation or something.

That would be as simple as replacing this line:

https://github.com/vuejs/vue-cli/blob/dev/packages/%40vue/cli/lib/invoke.js#L80

With a simple console.log().

If we want to still have it throw an error during tests, we could use isTestOrDebug to throw in that case.

[yyx990803]

Yeah we can make that optional - if the plugin does not have a generator, we will just skip it. In this case vue add is simply an alias for npm install or yarn add, but I think it's good to have the consistency that you can vue add any CLI plugin without worrying if it contains a generator. This also makes it easier for plugin authors to write consistent usage docs.

[Akryum]

Aye.