Use bower to install deps

[marekkalnik]

It may be a good idea to use the SpBowerBundle to manage dependencies. Create.js is already declared in bower repositories, so we could use it to avoid using submodules.

[lsmith77]

that certainly looks interesting

[marekkalnik]

We were talking about it with @dbu on hackday, this would be one of
possible solutions. We have not tested anything though.

[bergie]

The Bower packaging of VIE doesn't probably work correctly yet. Somebody had registered it with wrong repo URL and the compiled version isn't there anyway

[dbu]

@bergie do we need a correct VIE bower, given that the createjs repository includes the vie javascript and other deps directly?

is bower the "composer for javascript"? if it is, we should see with @Seldaek if composer could somehow support bower manifests and fully integrate bower to manage javascript dependencies.

[lsmith77]

@simensen just pointed out https://github.com/RobLoach/component-installer

[marekkalnik]

seems a bit fresh, IMHO it would be better to use something widely adopted

[simensen]

Yes, it is still a bit fresh. I think it can optionally use other tools behind the scenes but I haven't played with it enough to know how easy it woud be to work with bowser. At the very least, it might have some useful ideas and provide a starting point for a bower-installer for Composer. I'm sure @RobLoach would be happy to talk about other ideas. :)

[dbu]

we would need to find a way to not require the user to install some node.js components imho. if i got the sd bower bundle correctly, it needs to run js on your machine.
if we could combine component-installer with the features of the bower bundle (like assetic instead of require js) i think this really would have great potential. maybe jordi could even integrate the component-installer into composer directly?

[RobLoach]

@bergie The Bower packaging of VIE doesn't probably work correctly yet. Somebody had registered it with wrong repo URL and the compiled version isn't there anyway.

I believe it's missing Vie's dependency on http://github.com/mikeal/request/ . I could be wrong though.

@dbu is bower the "composer for javascript"?

There are many package management systems for JavaScript: npm, bower, component, Jam, volo, Ender to name a few. Each of them does something different and unique. There's a good comparison of some of them over here.

@dbu if it is, we should see with @Seldaek if composer could somehow support bower manifests and fully integrate bower to manage javascript dependencies.

Having Composer index package.json or component.json is something I was thinking about a while ago, but ran into a couple issues:

1. There are some deviations between how the manifest files operate and what package management system the package targets. Do we read package.json, or component.json? Is it Bower's component.json, or Component's component.json?
2. Indexing/downloading is one thing, installing/compiling is another. Just like how Composer writes an autoload.php, there needs to be a require definition written for us.

I'm not saying it would be impossible though, I just saw a few issues with it. This is why I started work on Component Installer, which means to take the best from npm/bower/component/jam/volo/ender/etc, and use Composer as a base.

@marekkalnik seems a bit fresh, IMHO it would be better to use something widely adopted

Yes, it is still young. There won't be a 1.0 release until it accommodates most of our needs. Would love to have more use cases, and work together on a solution for everyone that uses Composer. I've been working with some of the Bower folk to ensure Component Installer covers Bower's features. Are there any particular features you think it should have?

@dbu we would need to find a way to not require the user to install some node.js components imho. if i got the sd bower bundle correctly, it needs to run js on your machine.

Agreed, keeping the dependencies low is key. Some systems might have node available, others won't.

@dbu if we could combine component-installer with the features of the bower bundle (like assetic instead of require js) i think this really would have great potential.

Although the RequireJS file is written for you, you're not forced to use it. You can still use the single JavaScript/CSS files as usual. A ComponentInstallerBundle is an interesting idea, would love to talk more about this. Where do you see it going?

[marekkalnik]

@RobLoach for me, the most important feature is to handle bower/other managers files. It should be transparent from the package maintainer point of view, because we just can't require people to add another package file.

I don't think a require loader is necessary though. Would be good to have something simple so anyone can use it as he wants later. Something that will just download a library with all required dependencies.

[dbu]

@RobLoach what is the state of the component-installer these days? could it be ready to use? create.js just switched to use bower and we could profit from something reading the bower information...

[RobLoach]

@dbu Component Installer is doing well. There's a few discussions going on to port it over to use Composer's newly added Composer Plugin class to help clean up the implementation.

We'll have to introduce Composer support to Create.js' dependencies, but once that's done, having direct Create.js build support from Composer would be an easy one to handle. Looks like we'd need Composer support for:

• jquery
• jquery-ui
• view/VIE
• backbone
• underscore
• jquery.tagsinput
• annotate
• hallo

[dbu]

making it a composer plugin sounds like the natural thing to do yes. if you code it properly, should be easy to build both a stand alone tool and a plugin also, if there are use cases for the standalone.

can't component installer read bower files to know what to install? bergie showed me that all of them support bower.