If you are web developer it becomes hard to manage all js libraries if you aren’t using any package manager.
Few folks created bower to make the job easier. (As far as functionality is concerned, it works same as npm, if you have used.)
Steps for installations are just for linux guys – windows people – DIY.
First you need to install npm sudo apt-get install npm
You can install it by sudo npm install -g bower
Once you have installed bower, You can install a web package, just by executing following command in the directory of project –
bower install jquery
You can even use your own git repository as source or any other url
bower install https://github.com/jquery/jquery.git#2.0.3
Above command will install jquery for your project.
Once you have installed it successfully things will be kept in
bower_components/jquery
you can refer it by
bower_components/jquery/dist/jquery.js
. Simple. That’t it ?
No.
if you are like me – possessive about your directory structure – You want everything inside something like assets/lib/jquery/dist/jquery.js
, or simply want it inside assets/lib
directory instead of too many file/directory in root.
You can create a file in root of project .bowerrc
, put following content inside the file
{
"directory" : "assets/lib"
}
Since filename begins with .
it will be hidden in file browsers, clean.
Again – do you find these long assets path annoying ? – Grunt
to rescue – check http://bower.io/docs/tools/#grunt