IT:AD:Bower:HowTo:Create and manage a bower.json file

Let's say you've create a project, and used bower to download the packages you've used.

It's time to start managing the packages you've created.

bower init

And answer the questions it shows:

c:\tmp\bower.demo>bower init
? name: (bower.demo) foo
? name: foo
? version: 0.0.0
? description: A footurist library
? main file:
? what types of modules does this package expose?: amd
? keywords: foo bar
? authors: Sky <skysigal@xact-solutions.com>
? license: MIT
? homepage: skysigal.com
? set currently installed components as dependencies?: Yes
? add commonly ignored files to ignore list?: Yes
? would you like to mark this package as private which prevents it from being accidentally published to the registry?: Yes

and it will generate a bower.json file:

c:\tmp\bower.demo>dir
 Directory of c:\tmp\bower.demo

26/10/2014  08:55 p.m.               461 bower.json
26/10/2014  05:31 p.m.    <DIR>          bower_components
c:\tmp\bower.demo>

The contents of the bower.json file will be something like the following:

{
  name: 'foo',
  version: '0.0.0',
  authors: [
    'Foo Smith <foo@xact-solutions.com>'
  ],
  description: 'A footurist library',
  moduleType: [
    'amd'
  ],
  keywords: [
    'foo',
    'bar'
  ],
  license: 'MIT',
  homepage: 'http://foo.com',
  private: true,
  ignore: [
    '**/.*',
    'node_modules',
    'bower_components',
    'test',
    'tests'
  ],
  dependencies: {
    angular: '~1.3.0',
    durandal: '~2.1.0'
  }
}

When ever you want to update the file with a new package, or update an existing one, add the --save flag to the operation:

bower update angular --save