Do we still need bower?

[alexej-d]

I am sincerely curious as to why this generator still uses bower. Reading discussions like this keep me wondering if npm or yarn isn't enough or even superior.
BTW, I am not trying to start a rant. Maybe bower is indispensable and I just don't know all the reasons which led to it being a dependency.

[neilhem]

Hi, using npm means we need tools like Rollup or Browserify in our build process. Which requires a lot of changes, so this should be integrated when time comes.

[silvenon]

Personally I like npm + webpack (haven't tried Rollup yet) over bower + wiredep. On one hand adding a module bundler adds complexity, on the other wiredep was confusing to many users, and with a module bundler people can even require stuff like fonts and images. But a module bundler would probably limit this generator to only single page applications.

I would love to hear opinions about this.

[alexej-d]

I would also prefer npm + webpack over the current bower workflow but it may be too complex for this kind of generator. Also I like my useref blocks for static assets when coding static pages, not sure how a webpack equivalent would look like…

EDIT: Would that not be a good start on a way to replace bower and use webpack? I can see that that still implies several additional changes to different tasks and other files like package.json. But I believe the advantages would outweigh the difficulties of refactoring this generator.

[alexej-d]

Bower is now officially deprecated bower/bower#2298

[silvenon]

Thanks for pushing this important issue @alexej-d. Unfortunately Yeoman still hasn't come up with a solution for this problem (see yeoman/yeoman#1521 and taptapship/wiredep#234). The most sensible solution is probably to add npm support to wiredep.

[capitola-dev]

Bootstrap 4 beta 2 dropped bower support

Dropped Bower support as the package manager has been deprecated for alternatives (e.g., Yarn or npm). See bower/bower#2298 for details.

So it might be the time to let it die.

[silvenon]

Removed Bower in v4.0.0-0!