bower command not found windows

Question

I am having huge problems trying to use bower (to install foundation 5) or get anything bower related to work on the command line.

I've installed

• ruby 1.9.3
• git (with run from command prompt option)
• Nodejs

I've successfully ran

npm install -g bower grunt-cli
gem install foundation

and these have ran fine. I've looked in the npm/node_modules directory and I can see bower folder in there.

Every time I type bower either into the cmd, ruby cmd or git bash I get

command not recognized

I've set the git path in the environment variables.

What's annoying is the instruction on the bower site. It states:

npm install -g bower
bower install

Well this doesn't work!

Answer 1

I bumped into this problem after npm install -g bower too. I solved the problem by adding npm's binary folder to my path.

Here are some helpful hints for doing that:

1. Find the location of your npm global binaries: npm config get prefix. This path may look something like C:\Users\username\AppData\Roaming\npm (or C:\ProgramData\chocolatey\lib\nodejs.commandline.X.XX.XX\tools if you use Chocolatey).

2. Add the path from step 1 to your Path.

   • Open the Windows Control Panel, search for environment, then click on either edit environment variables for your account, or Edit the system environment variables`.

   • Find the variable named Path or PATH, or create one if it doesn't exist.

   • Paste the path from step 1 here (; delimited).

   • You may need to restart your command prompt window.

3. You should now be able to enter bower commands.