Why non-interactive create-next-app will not use default import alias?

The non-interactive create-next-app has an argument --import-alias to configure the import alias.

--import-alias <alias-to-configure>
 
  Specify import alias to use (default "@/*").

I do not want to customize the import alias, but to use the default @/*. In this case, I should not specify --import-alias when executing create-next-app like the following:

$ npx create-next-app@latest hello --javascript --eslint --no-tailwind --no-src-dir --app
? Would you like to customize the default import alias? » No / Yes

Why it does not take the default value automatically and asked me if I want to customize the default import alias?

The version of create-next-app is 13.4.4.

First answer on here so bare with me if there is any formatting/language mistakes.

TLDR;

npx create-next-app hello --javascript --eslint --no-tailwind --no-src-dir --app --import-alias '@/*'

Just specifying the default alias should get rid of the prompt

How and why;

I did some digging as I ran into a similar issue to you. I had a look in the nextjs source code - I can't comment on how they should be doing this but if we refer to this line: https://github.com/vercel/next.js/blob/e0ca2ba544b562bf718afadbc75db1885cb41504/packages/create-next-app/index.ts#L376

You will see a clause start that looks like this:

if (
  typeof program.importAlias !== 'string' ||
  !program.importAlias.length
) {
...

This seems to be the source of your problem, the command is looking at importAlias's type and if there has been anything input. This means even parsing --no-import-alias will not work because this conditional doesn't look at that. By comparison this is the conditional for the source directory option:

if (
  !process.argv.includes('--src-dir') &&
  !process.argv.includes('--no-src-dir')
) {
...

Here all it cares about is wether you have set the option or not and if you have set an option it won't propmt you.

All that being said I am trying to run this command programmatically using subprocess in Python and it still isn't working for me so if your use case is similar to mine. We are both stuck! Hopefully yours is just in a terminal/powershell and this helps you out!