create-roku-app

An interactive command-line scaffolder that bootstraps a modern Roku app with sensible defaults: language choice, linting, formatting, and editor tooling configured for you.

Quickly scaffold a modern Roku app, including the best practices to enhance your development experience. Instead of copying boilerplate by hand, you answer a few prompts (or pass flags) and get a ready-to-run project wired up with the RokuCommunity toolchain.

This project assumes that you will be using VSCode for development.

Tech stack

Node.js · TypeScript · npm (published package) · targets BrightScript / BrighterScript Roku projects

Features

• Interactive prompts to scaffold a complete Roku project in seconds.
• Choice of BrighterScript (recommended) or Vanilla BrightScript as the project language.
• Optional linter (bslint) and formatter (brighterscript-formatter), together or individually.
• Optional SceneGraph Inspector setup for a faster, more insightful debugging experience in the VSCode plugin.
• Optional git init and dependency install as part of the same flow.
• Non-interactive mode via CLI flags (--name, --recommended, --vanilla) for scripted or repeatable setups.
• Package-manager choice: npm (default), yarn, or pnpm.

How it works

create-roku-app is a Node CLI you run with npx, so there is nothing to install globally. It walks you through a short series of questions (language, linter/formatter, SceneGraph Inspector, git init, dependency install), then writes out a project directory with the matching configuration files and dependencies already in place. Passing --recommended skips the questions and applies the recommended defaults, and --vanilla produces a minimal project. The goal is to remove the repetitive boilerplate and get you to a working, best-practice Roku project on the first command.

Install / Usage

No global install is required. Run it directly with npx:

npx create-roku-app

With recommended options

npx create-roku-app --name "My App" --recommended

Options

1. Select a language

   • BrighterScript (recommended): A superset of the BrightScript language that includes modern features like classes, namespaces, compiler plugins and more. Compiles to Vanilla BrightScript.

   • Vanilla BrightScript: The old reliable language provided by Roku.

2. Linter and formatter

   • Install both (recommended)

   • Install linter only (bslint)

   • Install formatter only (brighterscript-formatter)

   • Not this time.

3. Enable SceneGraph Inspector: A faster and more insightful SceneGraph inspector within the Visual Studio Code plugin.

   • Enable (recommended)

   • Not this time.

4. Run git init? (y/n)

5. Run npm install? (y/n)

CLI options

These are only available as CLI --flags and will not appear on the questions list.

• --name: Shortcut to set the name of your project.

• --pm: Set the package manager that will be used to install dependencies, if necessary. Values: npm (default) | yarn | pnpm.

• --recommended: Start a project with the recommended options values.

• --vanilla: Start a project with minimal options and dependencies.

Contribute

You can see our issues list for things that need to be implemented. For any questions ping me (@arturocuya) on the Roku Developers Slack channel.