Bower is a Node.js based package manager for the web. Bower makes front-end dependency management a breeze. You can install, update, remove, modify your packages through Bower, within a single command. I'd like to introduce you to some of those commands.
Bower is a package manager for the web. It offers a generic, unopinionated solution to the problem of front-end package management, while exposing the package dependency model via an API that can be consumed by a more opinionated build stack. There are no system wide dependencies, no dependencies are shared between different apps, and the dependency tree is flat. [1]
It's among the workflow tools that I use and recommend to other developers, it takes roughly 30 minutes to get started, and it should quickly become evident how useful of a tool it is. It has been acclaimed as the solution for client-side JavaScript development.
You're more than welcome to contribute to the project - because open-source is good for you - on GitHub, there is also an extensive documentation on the official repository, though - we want to see the commands that we will be using on daily basis.
Install Bower
npm install -g bower
Find a Package
bower search
bower search bootstrap
Install a Package
bower install bootstrap
Update All Packages
bower update
Remove a Package
bower uninstall bootstrap
Which Packages Have You Got Installed?
bower list
Show Package Version
bower info bootstrap
Clean Your Package Cache
bower cache-clean
Install with JSON: package.json
// define a Bower package with this package.json file
{
"name": "app-name",
"version": "0.0.1",
"dependencies": {
"sass-bootstrap": "~3.0.0",
"modernizr": "~2.6.2",
"jquery": "~1.10.2"
},
"private": true
}
Createing Your package.json File
bower init
It doesn't get any more easy than that. Bootstrap is another Twitter project, and they encourage you to use Bower to take away the strain from your workflow, from having to do all of the above - manually.
I hope that this will inspire you to give Bower a try, it's easier to understand what a certain tool does, once you've seen how it operates and manages the packages.
What is your tool of choice for package management?