Senin, 10 September 2012

Twitter Bower Is a Package Manager for JavaScript


Package management is one of the areas where JavaScript is lacking. It hasn't been a problem for a long time, but as JavaScript is used for increasingly complex and powerful apps, and as more JavaScript libraries, frameworks and so on, show up, a simple method of using and updating those libraries is crucial.

There are several options for JavaScript developers, but Twitter has thrown its hat into the ring, albeit in a quiet way, with Twitter Bower, "package manager for the web."

The tool does more than handle JavaScript libraries, it works for many types of assets and is centered around the idea of "components," i.e. JavaScript code along with images, CSS code and everything that's needed for a feature to be useful stand-alone and easily integrated into other projects.

"Bower lets you easily install assets such as images, CSS and JavaScript, and manages dependencies for you," Twitter explains on the project's GitHub page.

Components go beyond the idea of libraries, they're not just blocks of code, their stand-alone feature that you can easily add to your own apps. That's the theory anyway, there's some work to be done yet to make this a reality for JavaScript.

Twitter Bower has been around since last week and it's getting a mixed reception from the community of developers that have stumbled upon it so far.

It's too early perhaps to get an opinion on it, the fact that Twitter hasn't made an announcement signals that the tool is not ready yet. That said, Bowler may have been in use internally for a while and Twitter is now open-sourcing it.

Twitter has a history of open-sourcing internal tools, Twitter's Bootstrap has been very popular with developers and has recently gotten a major update. Twitter is hardly alone in this, most big tech companies open source internal tools or technologies and rely extensively on other open-source projects.

Twitter Bower is available for download here.

Via: Twitter Bower Is a Package Manager for JavaScript

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