Possible solution to not copying entire repo - .bowerignore

[satazor]

This is related to #45.

The idea is to support something like .npmignore (e.g.: .bowerignore) in which files matched by it won't be copied to the repo. It should also fall back to the .gitignore file like npm: https://npmjs.org/doc/developers.html see section "Keeping files out of package".

What you guys think?

[nigma]

How about specifying include/exclude paths in the component.json? Using wildcard matching it should be straightforward to indicate which parts of a repository contain core files, and which are docs or tests that can be safely omitted.

[fat]

sounds good to me – would prefer .bowerignore to putting it in the component.json though

[sindresorhus]

Would prefer that too

[addyosmani]

+1 that would definitely be preferable

[desandro]

+1 but I'm for keeping it in component.json. One less dot file in the top-level, right? And that's where is where package settings go.

[sleeper]

Sorry to step in, but instead of inclusion/exclusion attributes, what about having components listing the files that are part of the deliverables (for example, a css file plus all the images it references), like for example Ruby's gems are doing ?

[sindresorhus]

It would be interesting to dig up some prior art of why NPM went with an ignore file. And the benefits compared.

[sindresorhus]

Should we support both, allowing it in a .bowerignore file and component.json, or would that be messy? Or maybe just add a ignore prop to the .bowerrc file?

@isaacs What's the reasoning with NPM going with a ignore file .npmignore instead of a whitelist?

[SBoudrias]

Allowing end user configuration if not ideal (lot of configuration for each user), would be a good solution to shim repo who're not setup correctly (or for which we want more/less files - ex: get only the modal module of twitter bootstrap).

Check out the Grunt-Bower-Task exportsOverride option example. To me it seems like a fair solution to a side of the problem.

[vendethiel]

What about allowing aliases ? Would also allow replacing deps with local versions etc

[gsmith85]

+1 on "specifying include/exclude paths in the component.json. Using wildcard matching...". Until this is included Bower isn't flexible enough for what I'd like to use it for.

Additional +1 for "for keeping it in component.json."

[desandro]

I'm working on this right now. Expect a PR in the next couple days.

[satazor]

@desandro Great! Do you think you can make it for the 0.7.0 milestone?

[satazor]

Closing this in favor of #227.