Changelog

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All notable changes to this project will be documented in this file.

The format is based on Keep a Changelog, and this project adheres to Semantic Versioning.

[0.2.1] - 2026-08-06

All of these land on top of 0.2.0's single-verb change, and the first is serious enough to make 0.2.0 worth skipping.

Fixed

  • Migration versions could collide, leaving the app unmigratable. Running with --oban-pro failed with Ecto.MigrationError: migration version ... is duplicated. Starter tracked its own migration timestamps but had no way to see one a package's installer created — fine in 0.1.x, where installers ran in a separate subprocess seconds later, but 0.2.0 made installers compose into the same run, where they can land in the same second. Timestamps are now advanced past every migration actually present, whoever wrote it.

  • The Tailwind class formatter never ran. It guarded on Code.ensure_loaded?(MyAppWeb.Formatters.ClassFormatter), but .formatter.exs is read before the project's code paths are set up, so that is false even after mix compile — attribute_formatters was always %{}. The generated file now requires the formatter source directly, which both fixes the sorting and makes formatting identical whether or not the app is built.

  • The oban_pro step guarded on the oban dependency, which 0.2.0's in-run installs made meaningless: a workflow adds every package it installs to mix.exs before any step runs, so the check passed while oban.install had yet to compose. {:add, :oban_pro} placed before {:add, :oban} would proceed as if Oban were set up and write config for Oban's installer to clobber. It now checks for Oban's config — what oban.install actually writes — so it stays honest about ordering.

  • The oban_pro warning still told users to reach for {:install, :oban} and {:queue, "starter.add", ["oban_pro"]}, the API 0.2.0 removed.

Changed

  • The quokka step adds Quokka to the plugins list in .formatter.exs itself instead of printing a notice telling you to. This needs the dep fetched before the plugin is named — mix format aborts on a plugin it cannot load — so the step now fetches as part of its work. It is appended rather than prepended, leaving Phoenix.LiveView.HTMLFormatter first.

  • CI's golden test passes --exsync --mix-test-watch --gigalixir, so flag-gated steps are exercised against real phx.new output instead of never running. --oban-pro stays out: the package is licensed and lives in a private Hex repo, so that step is covered by unit tests only.

Documentation

  • Packages from private Hex repos or organizations need qualified names ({:add, :"oban.oban_pro"}). Bare names resolve against public Hex.

[0.2.0] - 2026-08-05

Changed

  • {:add, name} is now the single verb for getting a package into an app. It runs Starter's built-in step when one exists, and otherwise installs the package and runs the package's own Igniter installer. Whether a package ships an installer is upstream's business and changes over time, so it is no longer something a workflow file has to encode — when a package gains an installer, its built-in step retires and workflows naming it keep working unchanged.

    {:install, name} still works, and now means "use upstream's installer even if Starter has a step of that name". It is rarely needed.

  • Package installers are composed into the workflow run rather than queued into a subprocess. Everything a run does — Starter's steps and the packages' own installers — lands in one diff you confirm once. Installers no longer run after your confirmation via mix igniter.install.

    Dependencies are the exception: packages that resolve to an install are added to mix.exs and fetched before any step runs, because their installers have to be on disk to compose at all. That dependency change is shown and confirmed on its own, ahead of the run's main diff.

  • Steps apply in list order, installers included. A step placed after one that installs a package sees its effects, so {:queue, ...} is no longer needed to sequence work around installs — it remains for work that genuinely has to run against the applied project on disk.

  • The generated workflow follows suit: oban_pro and sort_deps are ordinary in-run steps again, oban_pro placed after oban whose installer output it patches, and sort_deps last so it sorts the dependencies the installers added. This supersedes the 0.1.2 change that queued sort_deps.

Added

  • Every run prints a plan showing what each step resolved to — a built-in step, a package's installer, a plain dependency, or queued work. This is where the built-in-vs-installer distinction is now visible, since the step list no longer draws it.

  • Starter.Runner.installs/2, returning the packages a run would install with optional steps resolved against the given flags.

  • {:add, name} raises with a suggestion when name closely resembles a built-in step, so a typo is reported as a typo instead of becoming a doomed Hex lookup.

Fixed

  • The README documented mix starter.add oban,credo, which never worked — oban has no built-in add step, so the command errored. The starter.add CLI runs Starter's own steps only; use mix igniter.install for packages that ship installers.

[0.1.2] - 2026-08-04

Fixed

  • Passing a workflow flag (e.g. mix starter.run --oban-pro) crashed the entire queued-task chain: custom flags leaked into subprocess argv and igniter.install's strict option parser rejected them, so no installs ran at all. Queued tasks now receive exactly their own args plus --yes.
  • mix starter.run failed with "No workflow found" on Mix 1.20.3+: workflow discovery relied on mix compile loading the app, which newer Mix no longer does. The app is now loaded explicitly.
  • Re-running the bun step on an already-configured app crashed rewrite's formatter; its dep add and config edits are now skip-on-rerun.

Changed

  • The generated workflow queues sort_deps last instead of running it in-run, so dependencies added by the {:install, ...} installers get sorted too. Ordering guidance added to the Starter.Workflow docs.

[0.1.1] - 2026-08-04

Fixed

  • Interactive mix starter.run (without --yes) stalled at the first {:install, ...} step: Igniter executes queued tasks through a subprocess with no stdin, so the upstream installer's confirmation prompt could never be answered. Queued tasks (installs included) now always run with --yes — confirming the workflow's diff is the approval for everything it queues.

[0.1.0] - 2026-08-04

Initial release.

Added

  • Starter.Workflow — use Starter.Workflow turns a module into a runnable, flag-aware Igniter setup task
  • Workflow step forms: built-in steps ({:add, :oban}), optional steps (if: :flag), arbitrary Mix tasks ({:task, name, argv}), nested workflows ({:workflow, Module}), and custom step modules
  • mix starter.new — generates a self-documenting, editable workflow in your project. Every step carries a description rendered from its module's @shortdoc, so the file cannot drift from the catalog
  • mix starter.run — finds and runs your project's workflow, passing flags through (equivalent to invoking the workflow task directly)
  • mix starter.add, mix starter.remove, mix starter.gen — run steps individually, with --list
  • {:install, :package} step form: packages that ship their own Igniter installer (oban, oban_web, tidewave, ash, …) are installed by their own installer via mix igniter.install; Starter ships no competing step for them. Built-in add steps exist only where upstream ships no installer.
  • {:queue, task, argv} step form: queue any Mix task to run after the workflow's changes apply, in order — the way to sequence work after {:install, ...} steps (e.g. oban_pro after {:install, :oban})
  • mix starter.new --from SomeShared.Workflow — generate the app's workflow by expanding a shared workflow module (e.g. from a personal step pack) instead of the built-in catalog
  • Step catalog: 11 add steps, 5 remove steps, 12 gen steps (see README)
  • Latest-Phoenix-only support policy: steps target current phx.new output (Phoenix 1.8); workflows warn when run against apps on older Phoenix versions
  • Remove/gen steps warn loudly when they find nothing to change instead of silently no-oping
  • Version lookups (Hex, npm, GitHub, and the Oban Pro docs site for the private-repo oban_pro package) keep generated dependencies current and degrade gracefully offline
  • Test suite built on Igniter.Test; CI golden test runs the generated workflow against a freshly generated phx.new app