Add ability to import, install & setup an external library into your project

Background

Adding support for an external library (i.e. @angular/material) into your project can be a difficult task for a few reasons, most notably is the multiple steps to get things configured and setup properly. This could require going back and forth between documentation, blog posts and/or video tutorials.

Desired behavior

Add a command to the Angular CLI which would allow users to add functionality of a library to their project.

ng add [name of library]

An example would be to add support for @angular/material which could handle the following steps automatically:

• add dependencies (@angular/material, @angular/cdk, @angular/animations)
• import the necessary and/or most common modules to the root NgModule
  • BrowserAnimationsModule
  • MatButtonModule
• add a theme
• add gesture support
• add material icons

Implementation Considerations

Determination of the library to be added: possibilities considered thus far:

1. a pre-determined name which can resolve to a library/schematic (i.e. material -> @angular/material)
   • pros: simpler cognitive load on users
   • cons: maintaining a list of libraries is not practical
2. a schematic path (i.e. `@angular/material:add)
   • pros: very explicit about what will be run
   • cons: could cause confusion and allow running of any schematic
3. the package name (i.e. @angular/material) map to the schematic could live in the package’s package.json file
   • pros: clearly conveys what logic will be added, gives control/responsibility to the library owner
   • cons: no clear cons at this time

Additional/Future Features

Add an option to ng new to allow adding library support upon project creation ng new foo --add=[name of library]

[FriOne]

It would be great to be able to add libraries interactively. For example, if we ran ng add @angular/material a console start to asking us what we want to include, change, where we should place modifications, etc. It may store answers in variables that is passed then to schematics of a library (material in this case). So, in that way we need tools to make possible easily write own library with set of questions, variables and rules to apply changes that are needed to user.

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