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New Monaca CLI and Localkit

What's new in Monaca CLI 3.0 and Localkit
The new Monaca CLI and Localkit is a significant improvement from the past toolkits, providing you the more flexibility and robustness to your development.
Ejecting all build dependencies
The new version of Monaca toolkits enable to configure everything for the project.
In the previous version of CLI and Localkit, common modules used for building, bundling, and previewing apps were globally installed. Some example of these modules were Webpack, Browser-sync, Loader, and Babel. Installed globally meant that all Monaca projects shared a single set of tools and version locked.
The new release removes the global modules and installs them with each project. We now have the freedom of managing our toolset. Additionally, being installed into the project scope means the ability to customize each project uniquely.
The freedom to customize and manage is now in your hands.
Cordova of your choice
From this new release, Cordova is also decoupled from the project. It is now installed as one of the devDependencies for each project. That means the developer can now choose to use different Cordova versions for their projects.
At the moment, remote build server is still using a preconfigured Cordova distribution and you cannot change the version freely. We are working on to eliminate this limitation too!
Configurable tasks with package.json scripts
To provide more flexibility to developers in choosing their previewing and building tool, you can define each task in package.json. Now, monaca preview, monaca transpile, and monaca debug commands basically just execute scripts defined in package.json.
New Monaca CLI Commands
The following commands are added to the CLI.
monaca init
Initialize the current project as a Monaca project. With this command, you can migrate the project from PhoneGap, Ionic, Angular and Vue CLI. For more details, please refer to Migrating from other platforms.
monaca update
This command is used to update project created using Monaca CLI 2 or lower.
Migration to the new version
All existing projects are required to update.
Monaca Cloud IDE and Localkit users
When opening the project, a dialog will appear to automatically update the project. Please follow the instruction and the update is done.
Monaca CLI Users
For Monaca CLI users, run monaca update to update the project.
How it affects your project?
Non-Transpile projects
The package.json will be created/modified with the following changes:
A monaca:preview command will be added to the script property.
A dev command will be added to the script unless it already exists.
"dev": "browser-sync start -s www/ --watch --port 8080 --ui-port 8081"
Browser-sync and Cordova will be added as devDependencies.
"scripts": {
    "monaca:preview": "npm run dev",
    "dev": "browser-sync start -s www/ --watch --port 8080 --ui-port 8081"
}
Transpile projects
The package.json will be modified with the following changes:
monaca:preview, monaca:transpile and monaca:debug commands will be added to the script property.
dev, build, and watch commands will be added to the script unless they already exist.
Required packages including Webpack and Cordova will be added as devDependencies.
"scripts": {
    "monaca:preview": "npm run dev & npm run watch",
    "dev": "PORT=8080 node ./monaca_preview.js",
    "monaca:transpile": "npm run build",
    "build": "webpack --config ./webpack.prod.new.config.js",
    "monaca:debug": "npm run watch",
    "watch": "webpack --watch --config ./webpack.prod.new.config.js"
}
Other file changes
monaca_preview.js: a script to manage webpack and webpack-dev-server instance.
webpack.dev.new.config.js: a refined webpack configuration for development mode. It is used in monaca_preview.js.
webpack.dev.prod.config.js: a refined webpack configuration for production mode.
If you have changed your webpack configuration files (i.e webpack.dev.config.js or webpack.prod.config.js), you might need to modify the new generated webpack config files to your requirements.
Summary table
Confused with many changes? Here there is a table summarizing the changes we have made.
Changes
​
Previous Version
New Version
Package Dependencies
​
Install globally
Install required build modules to the project.
Cordova
​
Install globally
Install to the project
Monaca CLI Commands
monaca preview
Using globally installed browser-sync or webpack-dev-server for previewing.
Run monaca:preview script in package.json file.
 It by default will use locally installed browser-sync or webpack-server for previewing. For migrated project, it will use webpack-dev-server.
​
monaca transpile
Use globally installed Webpack to transpile and build the project.
 Run monaca:transpile script in package.json file.
 It will use locally installed Webpack by default.
​
monaca debug
Use globally installed Webpack to transpile and watch the file changes.
 Runs monaca:debug script in package.json file.
 It will use locally installed Webpack by default.
If you have any questions, please feel free to contact us via the contact form or directly on chat (click the icon on the right-bottom corner). We also have the commercial technical support to solve any particular problems you have in your project.

Cordova 9 changes

Product Guides

Last modified 2yr ago

Changes		Previous Version	New Version
Package Dependencies		Install globally	Install required build modules to the project.
Cordova		Install globally	Install to the project
Monaca CLI Commands	monaca preview	Using globally installed browser-sync or webpack-dev-server for previewing.	Run monaca:preview script in `package.json` file. It by default will use locally installed browser-sync or webpack-server for previewing. For migrated project, it will use webpack-dev-server.
	monaca transpile	Use globally installed Webpack to transpile and build the project.	Run monaca:transpile script in `package.json` file. It will use locally installed Webpack by default.
	monaca debug	Use globally installed Webpack to transpile and watch the file changes.	Runs monaca:debug script in `package.json` file. It will use locally installed Webpack by default.