Schematics Collections (schematicCollections)

The schematicCollections can be placed under the cli option in the global .angular.json configuration, at the root or at project level in angular.json .

{
  "$schema": "./node_modules/@angular/cli/lib/config/schema.json",
  "version": 1,
  "cli": {
    "schematicCollections": ["@schematics/angular", "@angular/material"]
  }
  // ...
}

Rationale

When this option is not configured and a user would like to run a schematic which is not part of @schematics/angular, the collection name needs to be provided to ng generate command in the form of [collection-name:schematic-name]. This make the ng generate command too verbose for repeated usages.

This is where the schematicCollections option can be useful. When adding @angular/material to the list of schematicCollections, the generate command will try to locate the schematic in the specified collections.

ng generate navigation

is equivalent to:

ng generate @angular/material:navigation

Conflicting schematic names

When multiple collections have a schematic with the same name. Both ng generate and ng new will run the first schematic matched based on the ordering (as specified) of schematicCollections.