So you want to write your first Angular application, however setting up even a ‘Hello World’ Angular application is not easy. It requires many steps such as:
- Setting up a TypeScript compiler, if you choose to use TypeScript
- Configuration of Webpack or other module loader
- Setting up local web development server
- Installing and configuring dependencies
- Configuring Unit Test environment
- Configuring End to End Test environment
- Working with Continuous Delivery
- Working with Continuous Integration and many more
You can perform all these tasks manually, but this will require a strong understanding of all these concepts and will make starting a new project very time consuming. To solve this problem, Angular comes with the Angular Command Line Interface (CLI).
Learn more about it here: https://cli.angular.io/
All these tasks are taken care of by Angular CLI, which is a command line tool for creating, testing, and deploying Angular apps. It is recommended to use Angular CLI for creating Angular apps, as you do not need to spend time installing and configuring all the required dependencies and wiring everything together. It provides you with many boilerplates and saves your time.
It uses Webpack to include all the packaging, the loading module, importing functionality, BrowserLink and more. The entire Webpack configuration is done completely by CLI so you don’t have to worry about it. It also configures Jasmine and Karma for unit tests and TypeScript complier to transpile TypeScript file to JavaScript etc. Let us see how we can work with Angular CLI.
