18 May 2014
Hello, Bower
Bower is a simple package manager for front-end assets like CSS and Javascript. It provides an elegant solution for including third-party assets and libraries (e.g. Bootstrap, jQuery) into different projects on your machine. Here’s how it works:
Get Bower
$ npm install -g bower
Install a Package
Bower installs packages on a project-by-project basis. Make sure you’re inside of the project directory where you want a package installed first, then run:
$ bower install <package>
This command creates a directory inside your project called bower-components/
containing the package you’ve installed, as well as any dependencies.
Use a Package
To use a Bower package, simply reference the appropriate files in bower-components/
manually.
<script src="/bower_components/jquery/jquery.js"></script>
List Packages
$ bower list
Use this command to list all packages installed on a given project. Again, the list of installed packages will vary on a project-by-project basis.