Managing frontend assets with Bower

This is aimed at developers and applies to the ‘frontend’ application only.

If you wish to add static assets to the core project (i.e., javascript, css, less files) please use bower to add and install them so we know what’s what and when to upgrade.

If you wish to do a good deed for ArchivesSpace you can track down the source of any vendor assets not included in bower.json and get them updated and installed according to this protocol.

General Setup

Step 1: install npm

On OSX, for example:

brew install npm

Step 2: install Bower

npm install bower -g

Step 3: install components

bower install

Adding a static asset to ASpace Frontend (Staff UI)

Step 1: add the component

bower install <PACKAGE NAME> --save

Step 2: map Bower > Rails

Edit the bower.json file to map the assets you want from bower_components
to assets. See examples in bower.json
This is kind of a hack to workaround:
https://github.com/blittle/bower-installer/issues/75

Step 3: Install assets

alias npm-exec='PATH=$(npm bin):$PATH'
npm-exec bower-installer

Step 4: Check assets in

Check the installed assets into Git. We version control bower.json and the installed files, but not the bower_components directory.

Production!

Don’t forget - if you are adding assets that don’t have a .js extension, you need to add them to frontend/config/environments/production.rb