Bower

A package manager for the web

Bower offers a generic, unopinionated solution to the problem of front-end package management, while exposing the package dependency model via an API that can be consumed by a more opinionated build stack. There are no system wide dependencies, no dependencies are shared between different apps, and the dependency tree is flat.

Bower runs over Git, and is package-agnostic. A packaged component can be made up of any type of asset, and use any type of transport (e.g., AMD, CommonJS, etc.).

View complete docs on bower.io

View all packages available through Bower's registry.

Install

$ npm install -g bower

Bower depends on Node.js and npm. Also make sure that git is installed as some bower packages require it to be fetched and installed.

Usage

See complete command line reference at bower.io/docs/api/

Installing packages and dependencies

# install dependencies listed in bower.json
$ bower install

# install a package and add it to bower.json
$ bower install <package> --save

# install specific version of a package and add it to bower.json
$ bower install <package>#<version> --save

Using packages

We discourage using bower components statically for performance and security reasons (if component has an upload.php file that is not ignored, that can be easily exploited to do malicious stuff).

The best approach is to process components installed by bower with build tool (like Grunt or gulp), and serve them concatenated or using module loader (like RequireJS).

Uninstalling packages

To uninstall a locally installed package:

$ bower uninstall <package-name>

prezto and oh-my-zsh users

On prezto or oh-my-zsh, do not forget to alias bower='noglob bower' or bower install jquery\#1.9.1

Running commands with sudo

Bower is a user command, there is no need to execute it with superuser permissions. However, if you still want to run commands with sudo, use --allow-root option.

Windows users

To use Bower on Windows, you must install msysgit correctly. Be sure to check the option shown below:

Note that if you use TortoiseGit and if Bower keeps asking for your SSH password, you should add the following environment variable: GIT_SSH - C:\Program Files\TortoiseGit\bin\TortoisePlink.exe. Adjust the TortoisePlink path if needed.

Configuration

Bower can be configured using JSON in a .bowerrc file. Read over available options at bower.io/docs/config.

Completion (experimental)

NOTE: Completion is still not implemented for the 1.0.0 release

Bower now has an experimental completion command that is based on, and works similarly to the npm completion. It is not available for Windows users.

This command will output a Bash / ZSH script to put into your ~/.bashrc, ~/.bash_profile, or ~/.zshrc file.

$ bower completion >> ~/.bash_profile

Analytics

Bower can collect anonymous usage statistics. This allows the community to improve Bower and publicly display insights into CLI usage and packages at stats.bower.io.

Data is tracked using Google Analytics and instrumented via Insight. It is made available to all bower team members. Tracking is opt-in upon initial usage. If you'd prefer to disable analytics altogether, you can manually opt-out, or create either a local, or global .bowerrc file with:

{
  "analytics": false
}

Support

• StackOverflow
• Mailinglist - [email protected]
• #bower on Freenode

Contributing

We welcome contributions of all kinds from anyone. Please take a moment to review the guidelines for contributing.

• Bug reports
• Feature requests
• Pull requests

Bower Team

Bower is made by lots of people across the globe, contributions large and small. Our thanks to everyone who has played a part.

Core team

• @satazor
• @wibblymat
• @paulirish
• @benschwarz
• @sindresorhus
• @svnlto
• @sheerun

Bower Alumni

• @fat
• @maccman

License

Copyright (c) 2014 Twitter and other contributors

Licensed under the MIT License