add possibility to download project generated from template as zip

Feature Suggestion

There are cases when git repository should not be created as result of project (component) generation from template. It will be nice to have possibility to download result of project generation from template as a zip file. Similar idea is implemented by https://start.spring.io/. It gives possibility to download generated project locally and start experiments without messing up company’s git repository.

Possible Implementation

New custom template action, e.g. publish:zip.

Context

Some heavily regulated companies has stron access polices around git repo creation. Current support for publishing to git repo is limited to single token which does not address more complex access setup to git repos (e.g. multi-nested groups in gitlab). This feature could help.

[benjdlambert]

hmm - that’s going to be pretty difficult for backstage to support, and probably not something that we’re going to look at supporting first class just yet either. If you already had a webserver deployed where you were running backstage, you could use the publish:file action to copy the contents of the workspace to the www directory and then you could navigate to your webserver and download them there as a workaround.

[benjdlambert]

I think this is still being worked on - but if you’d like to help contribute some other actions that would be great 🙏