Apple, Microsoft, Google, Adobe, et. al. install software have automatic code to handle pushing out security fixes.
On the development side, Java has maven or ivy to retrieve dependent jars from various public repositories.
Ruby has even better dependency retrieval tools: gem and bundle.
Does the Javascript community have any equivalent tool? I have found a number of tools to manage dynamically loading dependencies into the browser. I am NOT looking for those tools.
Specifically, I am looking for a tool that a new developer uses to retrieve the javascript files they need. The developer runs this tool and:
- It looks at the project dependency description file
- Discovers that the project needs jquery-ui-1.10.2, tiny_mce-3.5.8 and prettyLoader-1.0.1
- Retrieves jquery-ui-1.10.2.min.js, prettyLoader-1.0.1.js, tiny_mce-3.5.8 from the web
- Installs the .js and the .css into a local repository
- Realizes that jquery-ui relies on jquery-1.9.1 and downloads/installs jquery
- Determines that the tiny_mce needs the jquery plugin, and downloads and installs it.
After all this, the developer has a local copy of all the js/css files needed.
If a new tiny_mce or jquery comes out, the project file is updated and the developers just return the tool and they get all the new files.
If no version of a js library is specified then the latest release version is retrieved.
Please NOTE I am talking about a tool the website developer runs when they are updating the website code; the tool does not run in the browser. This is not dynamic loading of javascript.
http://bower.io will do all that, but I would also like some sort of workspace resolution of dependencies.
Say I have:
root/
– a/
– b/
a depends on b, if b is present in the workspace, use it, otherwise pull it from local or central repo.