Added devDependencies block to bower.json configuration

[ValMilkevich]

No description provided.

[1st8]

Nice feature!

How does bower know when to install the devDependencies and when not to?
The new bower:install:deployment task should skip devDependencies, if it doesn't already do that.

[SergeyKishenin]

@1st8 Do we need it to be installed in production? devDependencies are for the development-related scripts, e.g. unit testing, packaging scripts, documentation generation, etc.

[1st8]

No we don't, sorry if that was unclear. I would say devDependencies MUST NOT be installed in production.

I just couldn't find any bower related flag to tell it NOT to install the devDependencies in production.

[SergeyKishenin]

There is the -p or --production flag http://stackoverflow.com/a/19341028/532252

[1st8]

What do you think about using this flag in the bower:install:deployment task?

[SergeyKishenin]

We can do that now by rake bower:install:deployment['-p'].

But is it the preferred behavior? I don't think so. bower:install:deployment won't update our bower.json if we add/remove some packages, right?

That's why now by default we have install_before_precompile flag to perform plain bower:install task while deploying. bower:install:deployment is very optional and good for specific cases and should be executed manually, I think.

On subject: if we have devDependencies now so the preferred way to perform install task is with -p flag.

[1st8]

I'm planning to use bower:install:deployment in place of install_before_precompile in my automated deployment procedure. It respects the resolved dependency conflicts in my bower.json, which I don't want to manually resolve on every deployment on multiple hosts again (which would be required with the regular bower:install. This way, I only have to check my bower.json into version control, can push it to my server, and run bower:install:deployment.

I think this is the main use case of a deployment-install, just like bundle install --deployment simply installs the contents of your Gemfile.lock without resolving any dependencies again.

So for me it would be a perfect fit to instruct bower not to install development dependencies by default in a deployment install, but setting the -p-flag is not too much to ask. I can do that manually of course.
Do you think it is useful to describe the whole "Versioning, deployment and dependency conflict"-topic in a readme paragraph? Was thinking about writing one yesterday.

Back to topic - devDependencies are definitely a nice addition which I can see myself using in the future.

[SergeyKishenin]

@ValMilkevich, great work! But before merge we have to:

• tell bower not to install devDependencies by default
• add detailed description to Changelog (it's a minor change and we have to release 0.8.0 version after merge, I think)
• squash and rebase redundant commits (like 'readme.md')

@1st8 any contributions are welcome, "Versioning, deployment and dependency conflict" would be very useful for current version.

[ValMilkevich]

@SergeyKishenin, thanks for the note, I'm going to amend those during the upcoming few days.

[ValMilkevich]

@SergeyKishenin, @1st8 please check it out, PR looks ready for me

[SergeyKishenin]

For me too. But there are some conflicts right now, are you gonna fix it?

[ValMilkevich]

Looks like it's just not possible to merge with master, I thought it's something you can do when accepting PR?

I'm pretty new with public PRs, how can I resolve the conflicts?

[ValMilkevich]

it can be that github is just tricking around, as there are no conflicts in the branch ( however I forced push after squashing the commits - may it be the reason? )