- What is bastinald/ui and what does it actually generate?
- bastinald/ui is a Laravel starter kit that pairs Livewire with Bootstrap 5 to scaffold CRUD screens. Running its generator produces migrations, Eloquent models, Livewire components, and Blade views, so a working index/create/edit/delete surface exists in hours rather than sprints. It is not a runtime component library you drop into an existing frontend; its value is realized at scaffold time, and once the files are generated and committed you own them.
- Which Laravel, PHP, and Livewire versions does bastinald/ui support?
- Expect Laravel 8/9-era conventions, PHP 7.4 to 8.1, Livewire 2.x, and Bootstrap 5 based on the project's scope and age. The package description alone does not guarantee Laravel 10 or 11 or PHP 8.2+ support, so check the laravel/framework, livewire/livewire, and php constraints in its composer.json before committing. Pin exact versions in composer.lock and document the constraint set for your team.
- How do I install bastinald/ui in a new Laravel application?
- Install it with Composer into a fresh Laravel app, then run the package's generator commands to scaffold layouts, auth, and CRUD resources. Because the kit assumes it owns routing, layouts, and model conventions, installation is designed for greenfield projects rather than a mid-lifecycle application. Verify the Livewire and Bootstrap requirements from composer.json first, then generate a single resource as a smoke test before scaffolding everything.
- Can I use bastinald/ui in an existing Laravel application?
- Brownfield adoption is where feasibility drops sharply, since the generator assumes ownership of routing, layouts, auth scaffolding, and model conventions. Retrofitting usually means extracting individual components and manually reconciling them with your existing patterns, at which point most of the leverage is gone. If you want to reuse it, treat the kit as a reference implementation and copy the patterns worth keeping rather than grafting it on wholesale.
- Is bastinald/ui compatible with Livewire 3?
- There is no evidence in the package description of a Livewire 3 branch or roadmap, and Livewire 3 introduced breaking changes to lifecycle hooks, wire:model semantics, and Alpine bundling. Assume Livewire 2.x is the supported target unless composer.json or the repository issues indicate otherwise. If you need Livewire 3, budget time to port the generated components yourself.
- Does the generator overwrite my edits if I re-run it after a schema change?
- Generators of this type typically write files by path, so re-running after a schema change risks clobbering customizations you have made to generated views and components. The available documentation does not describe a merge strategy or a safe re-run path, so test regeneration in a throwaway branch and commit before running it. Keeping your custom logic in separate components, traits, or child views reduces the blast radius.
- Is bastinald/ui actively maintained, and are the generated components tested?
- It is a single-maintainer project at roughly 115 GitHub stars with no evident commercial backing, so the bus factor is one and there is no published security or support policy. The package description does not indicate that generated components ship with tests, so assume you will write your own coverage for anything you keep. Before adopting, review commit cadence over the last 12 months and whether issues are being triaged.
- Does bastinald/ui work with Tailwind CSS, Inertia, or Vue?
- The fit is negative for those stacks. The kit asserts Bootstrap 5 markup directly in Blade views rather than abstracting it behind a component contract, and its components are server-driven Livewire rather than Inertia or Vue pages. Importing it alongside Tailwind or Inertia means maintaining two UI paradigms for one payoff, which is a maintenance tax with little return.
- How do I customize Bootstrap 5 theming and branding in bastinald/ui?
- Bootstrap 5 classes are written directly into the generated Blade views, so restyling means editing those views or overriding them with your own compiled CSS. Compile Bootstrap from source with Sass variables for colors, typography, and spacing, and load the Bootstrap JS bundle with Popper so modals and dropdowns behave correctly. Centralize layout and navigation in shared partials so you are not forking every generated view.
- What are the alternatives to bastinald/ui for Laravel CRUD scaffolding?
- Laravel Filament is the most common comparison for admin panels and CRUD, and Laravel Nova is the commercial option; both are actively maintained with larger ecosystems. Jetstream with Livewire plus a component library is another route if you want to stay closer to first-party scaffolding. bastinald/ui's differentiator is a lightweight Bootstrap 5 plus Livewire 2 combination, which only helps if that is already your stack.