Tool for installing bower dependencies that won't include entire repos. Although Bower works great as a light-weight tool to quickly install browser dependencies, it currently does not provide much functionality for installing specific "built" components for the client.
NOTE: Changed with v0.4.0 bower-installer will automatically run bower install
before moving files around.
#Bower installs entire repositories
{
"name" : "test",
"version": "0.1",
"dependencies" : {
"backbone" : "latest"
}
}
If bower install
is run on this configuration file, the entire backbone repository will be pulled down
and copied into a components directory. This repository is quite large, when probably only a built js and css
file are needed. Bower conveniently provides the bower list --paths
command to list the actual main files associated
with the components (if the component doesn't define a main, then the whole repository is listed instead).
#Bower Installer
Bower installer provides an easy way for the main files to be installed or moved to one or more locations. Simply add to
your bower.json an install
key and path
attribute:
{
"name" : "test",
"version": "0.1",
"dependencies" : {
"backbone" : "latest"
},
"install" : {
"path" : "some/path"
}
}
Install bower-installer by executing
npm install -g bower-installer
From the terminal in the same directory as your bower.json file, enter:
bower-installer
After executing this, backbone.js
will exist under some/path
relative to the location of your
bower.json file.
#Overriding main files A lot of registered components for bower do not include bower.json configuration. Therefore, bower does not know about any "main files" and therefore, by default bower-installer doesn't know about them either. Bower-installer can override an existing main file path or provide a non-existant one:
{
"name" : "test",
"version": "0.1",
"dependencies" : {
"backbone" : "latest",
"requirejs" : "latest"
},
"install" : {
"path" : "some/path",
"sources" : {
"requirejs" : "components/requirejs/require.js"
}
}
}
If bower installer is run on this configuration, require.js
and backbone.js
will all appear under
some/path
relative to your bower.json file.
#Install multiple main files
For one reason or another you may want to install multiple files from a single component. You can do this by providing
an Array
instead of a String
inside the sources hash:
{
"name" : "test",
"version": "0.1",
"dependencies" : {
"jquery-ui" : "latest"
},
"install" : {
"path" : "some/path",
"sources" : {
"jquery-ui" : [
"components/jquery-ui/ui/jquery-ui.custom.js",
"components/jquery-ui/themes/start/jquery-ui.css"
]
}
}
}
#Install files to multiple locations
Files can be installed to multiple locations based upon file type. Do so by modifying the path
to be a map of file-type
locations. Example:
{
"name" : "test",
"version": "0.1",
"dependencies" : {
"jquery-ui" : "latest"
},
"install" : {
"path" : {
"css": "src/css",
"js": "src/js"
},
"sources" : {
"jquery-ui" : [
"components/jquery-ui/ui/jquery-ui.custom.js",
"components/jquery-ui/themes/start/jquery-ui.css"
]
}
}
}
#Rename files during copy
Files can be renamed when bower-installer is copying them to their new destination. Do so by modifying the mapping
object. Example:
{
"name" : "test",
"version": "0.1",
"dependencies" : {
"jquery-ui" : "latest"
},
"install" : {
"sources" : {
"jquery-ui" : {
"mapping": [
{"bower_components/jquery-ui/ui/jquery-ui.js": "jquery-ui.js"},
{"bower_components/jquery-ui/ui/minified/jquery-ui.min.js": "jquery-ui-min-new-name.js"}
]
},
}
}
}
#Ignore files
Files can be ignored and not copied. Do so by adding the appropriate keys to the ignore
array. In the following example, ember-model
has as dependency on ember
and handlebars
, so normally ember
and the handlebars
js files would be copied but in this case we don't want them copied over. Example:
{
"name" : "test",
"version": "0.1",
"dependencies": {
"ember-model" : "0.0.8"
},
"install": {
"path": "build/src",
"ignore": ["ember", "handlebars"]
}
}