Bower replacement in Visual Studio 2017 ASP.NET MVC Core Template
Lately I created a ASP.NET MVC Core project from scratch using Visual Studio 2017 (15.6.3). I discovered the usual JavaScript frameworks:
- bootstrap
- jquery
- jquery-validation
- jquery-validation-unobtrusive
But unfortunately all Bower support is gone! There's no bower.json, no .bowerrc and no "Manage Bower Packages..." anymore:
What's wrong with Visual Studio's ASP.NET MVC Core template? Did Bower become obsolete?
Please don't duplicate this question to How to use bower packages in Visual Studio 2017 if Bower is deprecated! I don't like a fix pointing to deprecated technologies.
I'd like to narrow the question: What's the simplest (most intuitive) way to replace Bower by NPM? Like Bower did with its .bowerrc: { "directory": "wwwroot/lib" }?
Answer
Microsoft have a lightweight and currently under the radar solution to this called Library Manager (LibMan).
It's a stripped down json based solution, with a very simple UI - that gives you control over which files to download (no more downloading hundreds of files when you just need 1).
Mads Kristensen did a great little intro to the preview at Build 2017. (the video should start at the correct place around 43 mins).
At the time of writing this it's still in preview - but due to be released with Visual Studio 15.8.
If you'd like to try it before that you can grab it from the GitHub Repo or Visual Studio Marketplace - instructions in the solution to this question
You can still use npm etc - though here are Microsoft's reasons for using this instead (or as well as) - from the Visual Studio Marketplace:
Reasons for using this extension
- For apps not currently using another package manager
- For projects where you think Bower and npm are overkill
- For developers that don't want to use Bower or npm
- For developers that values simplicity in their tools
- For using custom or private packages/files
- For ASP.NET Core apps where NuGet can't install content packages