Bower configuration

July 18, 2016 · View on GitHub

The config is obtained by merging multiple configurations by this order of importance:

  1. CLI arguments via --config
  2. Environment variables
  3. Environment variables with config key of package.json
  4. Local .bowerrc located in the current working directory
  5. All .bowerrc files upwards the directory tree
  6. .bowerrc file located in user’s home folder (~)
  7. .bowerrc file located in the global folder (/)

Example of CLI arguments:

  • --config.endpoint-parser=<parser>
  • --config.storage.packages=<packages>

Example of valid environment variables:

  • bower_https_proxy is evaluated as https-proxy
  • bower_storage__packages is evaluated as storage.packages

The same keys can be used under config key in package.json

Available configuration variables, in .bowerrc. format:

{
  "cwd": "~/my-project",
  "directory": "bower_components",
  "registry": "https://bower.herokuapp.com",
  "shorthand-resolver": "git://github.com/{{owner}}/{{package}}.git",
  "proxy": "http://proxy.local",
  "https-proxy": "https://proxy.local",
  "ca": "/var/certificate.pem",
  "color": true,
  "timeout": 60000,
  "strict-ssl": true,
  "storage": {
    "packages" : "~/.bower/packages",
    "registry" : "~/.bower/registry",
    "links" : "~/.bower/links"
  },
  "interactive": true,
  "resolvers": [
    "mercurial-bower-resolver"
  ],
  "shallowCloneHosts": [
    "myGitHost.example.com"
  ],
  "scripts": {
    "preinstall": "",
    "postinstall": "",
    "preuninstall": ""
  },
  "ignoredDependencies": [
    "jquery"
  ]
}

cwd

String

Current working directory - the directory from which bower should run. All relative paths will be calculated according to this setting. It should be used only via programmatic API or CLI arguments. Do not put it into .bowerrc.

"cwd": "~/my-project"

directory

String

The path in which installed components should be saved. If not specified this defaults to bower_components.

"directory": "bower_components"

registry

Object or String

The registry config. Can be an object or a string. If a string is used, all the property values below will have its value. Defaults to the bower registry URL.

If your organization wishes to maintain a private registry, you may change the values below.

"registry": "https://bower.herokuapp.com"

registry.search

Array of String or String

An array of URLs pointing to read-only Bower registries. A string means only one. When looking into the registry for an endpoint, Bower will query these registries by the specified order.

"registry": {
  "search": [
    "http://localhost:8000",
    "https://bower.herokuapp.com"
  ]
}

registry.register

String

The URL to use when registering packages.

"registry": {
  "register": "http://localhost:8000"
}

registry.publish

String

The URL to use when publishing packages.

"registry": {
  "publish": "http://localhost:8000"
}

shorthand-resolver

String

Define a custom template for shorthand package names. Defaults to {% raw %}git://github.com/{{owner}}/{{package}}.git{% endraw %}

The shorthand-resolver key provides support for defining a custom template which Bower uses when constructing a URL for a given shorthand. For example, if a shorthand of twitter/flight or twitter/flight#v1.0.0 is specified in the package's manifest dependencies, the following data can be referenced from within the shorthand-resolver template:

owner: "twitter"
package: "flight"
shorthand: "twitter/flight"

"shorthand-resolver": "git://example.com/{{owner}}/components/{{package}}.git"

"shorthand-resolver": "git://example.com/{{shorthand}}.git"

proxy

String

The proxy to use for http requests.

"proxy":"http://<host>:<port>"

https-proxy

String

The proxy to use for https requests.

"https-proxy":"http://<host>:<port>"

user-agent

String

Sets the User-Agent for each request made. Defaults to: node/<process.version> <process.platform> <process.arch>

"user-agent": "Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 6.1) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/41.0.2228.0 Safari/537.36"

timeout

Number

The timeout to be used when making requests in milliseconds, defaults to 60000 ms.

"timeout": 40000

strict-ssl

Boolean

Whether or not to do SSL key validation when making requests via https.

"strict-ssl": false

ca

Object or String

The CA certificates to be used, defaults to null. This is similar to the registry key, specifying each CA to use for each registry endpoint.

The Certificate Authority signing certificate that is trusted for SSL connections to the registry. Set to null to only allow "known" registrars, or to a specific CA cert to trust only that specific signing authority.

"ca": "/etc/ssl/cert.pem"

color

Boolean

Enable or disable use of colors in the CLI output. Defaults to true.

"color": true

storage

Object

Where to store persistent data, such as cache, needed by bower. Defaults to paths that suit the OS/platform. Valid keys are packages, registry, links.

"storage": {
  "packages" : "~/.bower/packages",
  "registry" : "~/.bower/registry",
  "links" : "~/.bower/links"
}

tmp

String

Where to store temporary files and folders. Defaults to the system temporary directory suffixed with /bower.

"tmp": "~/.bower/tmp"

interactive

Boolean

Makes bower interactive, prompting whenever necessary. Defaults to null which means auto.

"interactive": true

resolvers

Array of String

List of Pluggable Resolvers to use for locating and fetching packages.

"resolvers": [
  "mercurial-bower-resolver"
]

shallowCloneHosts

Array of String

Bower's default behavior is to not use shallow cloning, since some Git hosts (e.g. older versions of GitHub Enterprise) fail to provide a response when asked to do a shallow clone (with --depth 1). This list allows to whitelist hosts that are known to support shallow cloning.

"shallowCloneHosts": [
  "myGitHost.example.com"
]

scripts

Bower provides 3 separate hooks that can be used to trigger other automated tools during Bower usage. Importantly, these hooks are intended to allow external tools to help wire up the newly installed components into the parent project and other similar tasks. These hooks are not intended to provide a post-installation build step for component authors. As such, the configuration for these hooks is provided in the .bowerrc file in the parent project's directory.

In .bowerrc do:

{
    "scripts": {
        "preinstall": "<your command here>",
        "postinstall": "<your command here>",
        "preuninstall": "<your command here>"
    }
}

The value of each script hook may contain a % character. When your script is called, the % will be replaced with a space-separated list of components being installed or uninstalled.

Your script will also include an environment variable BOWER_PID containing the PID of the parent Bower process that triggered the script. This can be used to verify that a preinstall and postinstall steps are part of the same Bower process.

ignoredDependencies

Array

Bower will ignore these dependencies when resolving packages.

"ignoredDependencies": [
  "jquery", "angular"
]