rproj

Guided bootstrap-to-game-dev CLI for Roblox.

Takes a fresh Windows PC all the way to a working Roblox/Luau development setup, then scaffolds projects on top of it — and explains every tool and package as it goes, so you end up knowing why your setup looks the way it does.

🎮  rproj 0.2.1 - guided bootstrap-to-game-dev CLI for Roblox

    Takes a fresh PC all the way to a working Roblox dev setup, then
    scaffolds projects on top of it. Explains every tool and package
    as it goes, so you end up knowing why your setup looks like it does.

📚  Commands

  🚀  rproj new <name>        Scaffold a project. Sets your machine up first if it
                              hasn't been, then asks only about this project's packages.
                              --like <setup> reuses a saved selection, --save-setup saves one

  🔧  rproj setup             Install or change the machine-wide tools: system apps, CLI
                              tools, Studio plugins, editor extensions

  🔩  rproj configure [tool]  Walk through a tool's settings one at a time - StyLua,
                              Selene, luau-lsp - explaining each, then write them out

  🔄  rproj upgrade           Re-apply rproj's generated config to a project you already made,
                              so it picks up fixes shipped since it was scaffolded

  👀  rproj watch             Resume the dev loop: install what's missing, watch the sourcemap

  📋  rproj copy              Copy every file under src/ to the clipboard, with path headers

  📖  rproj info [key]        Look up what a tool or package does, and how to use it

✨  New here?  rproj new my-first-game  sets your machine up and
    scaffolds your first project in one go.

Why

Setting up a Roblox project properly means installing Git, VS Code, Roblox Studio, and Blender; installing Rokit and then Rojo, Wally, Selene, StyLua, Lute and luau-lsp through it; installing the Rojo and luau-lsp Studio plugins; installing four or five VS Code extensions; and then writing default.project.json, wally.toml, selene.toml, stylua.toml, .luaurc, .gitattributes, a sourcemap watcher, and a CI workflow that agrees with all of them.

Each of those has a gotcha that costs an evening the first time you meet it. rproj knows them and gets them right by construction:

• Wally deletes Packages/ when a project has no dependencies, and strips export type lines out of link files on every install.
• ProfileStore is a server-realm package — listed under [dependencies] it doesn't just land in the wrong folder, wally install refuses to resolve it at all.
• Without a .gitattributes pinning LF, a fresh Windows clone fails stylua --check on every file it has.
• luau-lsp's Studio-plugin bridge is off by default, which is why parts you create in Studio never autocomplete in your editor.
• Vide's API is a mixed table by construction, so selene's mixed_table lint fails every UI file a Vide project will ever contain — and selene exits 1 on warnings, not just errors.

Every one of those is a real bug that was reproduced and fixed here, not a hypothetical. Every one is documented in the source, next to the code that prevents it.

Requirements

• Windows. Installs go through winget. This is the only supported platform.
• Rust 1.89+ to build. Edition 2024 sets a floor of 1.85, but notify-rust declares 1.89 and is the highest in the dependency tree.

Install

cargo install rproj

Or from source, to get unreleased changes:

cargo install rproj --locked

Quick start

rproj new my-first-game

That's the whole thing. On a machine that has never been set up it asks what to install first (system apps → CLI tools → Studio plugins → VS Code extensions), then asks about this project's packages, then scaffolds. On every run after that it skips straight to the project questions — the machine answers almost never change, and re-asking four multi-selects per project was friction with no payoff.

Nothing already installed is ever reinstalled, and a single item failing to install is a warning, not an abort.

Commands

Choosing packages

rproj new offers two modes:

• Guided — one prompt per category, in order: State management → UI → Data & profiles → Testing → Utilities. State/UI/Data are single-pick (you don't run two UI frameworks); Testing and Utilities are multi-pick. Guided mode adds companion packages automatically — pick react and you get react-roblox, pick charm alongside Vide and you get vide-charm rather than the React binding.
• Expert — one flat multi-select across the whole catalog, no categories, no automatic companions.

Then: Wally (default) or git submodules. Submodules clone each package's repo into modules/submodules/ and generate link files, with dependencies resolved transitively — submodules have no dependency resolution of their own, so a selection that isn't closed over its requirements mounts packages next to siblings that aren't there.

What gets scaffolded

my-first-game/
├── default.project.json     server/client/shared tree + place properties
├── rokit.toml               project-local pins for every selected CLI tool
├── wally.toml               [dependencies] / [server-dependencies], split by realm
├── selene.toml              std = "roblox" (or "roblox+testez")
├── stylua.toml              Luau syntax
├── .luaurc                  languageMode = "strict"
├── .gitattributes           pins the working tree to LF
├── .gitignore
├── rproj.toml               what you picked, and how
├── sourcemap.json
├── src/
│   ├── shared/hello.luau
│   ├── server/hello.server.luau
│   └── client/hello.client.luau
├── tests/                   TestEZ only
│   ├── .luaurc              TestEZ's globals, for luau-lsp
│   └── {shared,server,client}/hello.spec.luau
├── .lute/check.luau         the quality gate
├── .github/workflows/ci.yml runs the same gate, unchanged
└── .vscode/settings.json    sourcemap, Studio bridge, StyLua path, LF

Plus testez.yml and testez-companion.toml if TestEZ was selected, Packages/ (Wally) or modules/ (submodules), and a Blender starter scene if Blender was enabled at setup.

The quality gate

One script, .lute/check.luau, that you run locally with lute run check and CI runs unchanged — so local and CI results can't drift.

A step is emitted only if the project selected its tool, so a project without StyLua gets a script that never calls it rather than a guaranteed CI failure. All four run before the script exits, so one run reports every problem instead of stopping at the first. Targets are src, plus tests when TestEZ is in play.

The catalog

Every entry — app, CLI tool, plugin, extension, package — carries a one-line description and a maintenance badge (Active / Community-stable / Legacy), shown inline in every picker. Badges are hand-curated, not checked live.

System apps (winget): Git · VS Code · Roblox Studio · Roblox · Blender

CLI tools (rokit): rojo · wally · wally-package-types · selene · stylua · lute · luau-lsp · tarmac · mantle

Studio plugins: Rojo · Hoarcekat · luau-lsp companion · Roblox's Blender add-on

VS Code extensions: luau-lsp · vscode-rojo · selene · StyLua · roblox-ui · TestEZ Companion · GitHub Actions · three themes

Wally packages, 22 of them:

rproj info <key> prints the long version for any of them.

Development

cargo build
cargo test                                  # 94 tests, ~3s
cargo clippy --all-targets -- -D warnings

There's also a live suite that scaffolds genuine projects — real network, real wally install, real rojo build, real lute run check — and removes them on Drop however the test ends:

cargo test --test live -- --ignored --test-threads=1     # ~69s

--test-threads=1 is not optional: the tests share rokit's global manifest and wally's package cache, and two scaffolds racing on those is an irreproducible flake.

The interactive commands are tested by driving the real binary through a pseudo-terminal (tests/common/mod.rs). Two things forced that: inquire reads the console input handle rather than stdin, so a piped rproj configure stylua renders its first prompt and then hangs forever; and the pty byte stream is not what the program printed — ConPTY may express a line break as \n or as a cursor move depending on machine load, so assertions run against a rendered screen instead of the raw bytes. Synchronisation is by expecting output, never by sleeping.

Set RPROJ_NO_EMOJI=1 for + / - / ! markers instead of ✅ / ➖ / ❗ — for a log file, a CI transcript, or a screen reader.

docs/architecture.md in the repository is the full reference: data model, subsystem map, flow diagrams, the data-driven matrices behind the catalog and the quality gate, and the list of ecosystem landmines with the reproduction behind each one. It is not shipped in the published crate — it is a design document for maintainers, not install documentation.

Status

v0.2.1. Windows-only and Luau-only.

Deliberately not planned: macOS support and roblox-ts. On the roadmap: a GUI over the same core logic, and live maintenance-status checking once the catalog is large enough that hand-curation becomes a burden.

License

MIT © Chatar Abdelilah