Often times I like to try out new things in web development and nodejs world. But there is one problem with it.

I have tried out to create a new projects using create-react-app, create-next-app or any backend app using express or hapi, or any monorepo using lerna, turbo or nx.

But the command to start development environment or build the project changes from one to another.

viz.
create-react-app starts development environment with npm start
create-next-app starts development environment with npm run dev
and so on.

and there is no one command to rule them all.
But don't worry there is one solution to it.

You need to have zsh, oh-my-zsh installed on your system to take advantage of the solution

Here is how you can do it

Step 1: Enable dotenv plugin in zsh. Edit your ~/.zshrc

plugins=(dotenv)

Now this plugin will always automatically source your .env file everytime you cd into your project directory that contains a .env file

Step 2: Create and add following content a .env to create-react-app project

alias ns="npm start"
alias nb="npm run build"

Step 3: Create and add following content a .env to create-next-app project

alias ns="npm run dev"
alias nb="npm run build"

Step 4: For java spring boot project you can add following

alias ns="mvn org.springframework.boot:spring-boot-maven-plugin:run"

Now when you cd into create-react-app project then all you need to run ns to start project
also when you cd into create-next-app project then as well you need to run ns to start the project

Thats it its just one time configuration you have to do in your project and you are done. No more remembering project specific commands. Cheers. Enjoy.