Preparing the environment

I use preact-cli with the simple template:

preact create simple preact-bug-h
cd preact-bug-h
preact build

I verified that Hello, World! is displayed in the browser — as expected.

Problem 1: TypeError: h is not a function

Edit index.js and paste the following line before export default class App ...:

const h = 0;

Run preact build, get the following result:

TypeError: h is not a function
method: JkW7
at: /.../preact-bug-h/index.js:9:4

This error is quite explicit, but still it's not super obvious why h cannot be used here.

Problem 2: empty page is rendered silently

Edit index.js, and now define h to be a function, for example:

const h = () => {};

Run preact build, is finishes successfully. Open the result page in browser — now it appears to be empty.

Discussion

I'm sorry if this is a silly issue and thank you for looking into it. I also hope it's an appropriate place to raise the issue.

The default index.js only imports Component:

import { Component } from 'preact';

As I understand, h is injected when JSX is rendered by babel. This happens behind the scene, and we probably want developers to not worry about the mechanics of this process. However, I'm afraid that the chosen name might be a bit too common, especially in quick prototypes. Developers new to the ecosystem might get disoriented when their project suddenly stops working.

• Maybe the template/index.js can be updated to also import h? The ticking clock demo on the getting started page does that, even though it's not being explicitly used. I personally don't think it's the best solution, but at least it gives a hint.

• Maybe preact-cli can be reconfigured by default to use a different name, not h?

• Maybe preact-cli documentation can be improved to mention the use of h?

Th name isn't replaced when creating an app using:

preact create simple app

It's true for all the file I think, at least it's the case in the index.html as well as the manifest.
Version 2.0.1

Migrate from eslint-config-synacor to official ESLint configuration for Preact. I will be glad to make PR if this migration is reasonable.

When initialised with npx preact-cli create simple myproject the artifacts are organised in a way that results in 404 on static assets and manifest.json. To solve this one has to move assets directory and manifest.json into src.