permanently ignore a dependency with bower

Question

I am downloading angular, angular-bootstrap and bootstrap with bower. Bootstrap has a dependency on jquery which is installed in the process. But i don't need it in my project as i am only using bootstrap's css.

So i tried to permanently remove the dependency on jquery with

bower uninstall jquery --save

It's uninstalling jquery, but the next time i make bower update, it's downloaded again.

Is there a way to tell bower to permanently skip a dependency ?

edit: I wish there was something like this:

"resolutions": {
    "jquery": "no, thanks"
}

Kiely

Answer 1

Pull request #1394 added official support for this feature and is present in bower version 1.6.3 and later. Check your version with bower -v, and run npm install -g bower to upgrade.

For reference, please see the .bowerrc official specification document. If this doesn't work for you, please file an issue with bower because it is a bug.

We use it like this in our .bowerrc such as the following:

{
  "ignoredDependencies": [
    "bootstrap",
    "bootstrap-sass",
    "bootstrap-sass-official"
  ]
}

Jiggered

This still isn't merged yet? – Jurkoic

I can confirm I'm also getting this issue with the PR, so it's not even the full solution - github.com/bower/bower/pull/1394#issuecomment-73864285 – Milwaukee

It doesn't work in bower 1.7.0, the answer from @pierrefevrier helped me https://mcmap.net/q/350075/-permanently-ignore-a-dependency-with-bower – Victoriavictorian

@IvanKaplin it is still working for me, perhaps you have a different problem. My answer is not a workaround. This is a supported feature of bower, if it isn't working I suggest you file an issue with bower instead of downvoting this answer. – Jiggered

github.com/bower/spec/blob/master/config.md#ignoreddependencies – Proctology

Regarding this not working in 1.7.0, I had a similar issue with it not working in 1.7.4 (IIRC, I have upgraded to 1.8.0 now). Note there was a subsequent defect surrounding this feature that went into a later release: github.com/bower/bower/issues/1962 – Skirting

Answer 2

We had a similar situation where we had Backbone depend on Underscore in its bower.json, but we're using Lo-Dash in its stead, so Bower was unnecessarily pulling down Underscore for each install. We have automated checks for 3rd party license compliance, so we didn't want anything we don't actually use.

I realize this isn't exactly what they're meant for, but Bower's install-hooks can be used to clean unneeded deps post-install (at least until Bower gets the sort of "no thanks" resolution you hinted at). In your .bowerrc:

{
    "directory": "app/bower_components",
    "scripts": {
        "postinstall": "rm -rf app/bower_components/underscore"
    }
}

It's a bit of a hack, but works.

Aurie

Interesting solution! But it doesn't solve the problem of using tools like wiredep without configuring it :( – Rehash

Answer 3

Something you can do also in your bower.json file:

{
  "dependencies": {
    ...
    "bootstrap": "^3.2.0"
  }
  "overrides": {
    "bootstrap": {
      "dependencies": []
    }
  }
}

This means: remove all boostrap's dependencies, which is what you want since jquery is the only one (you can check with bower info bootstrap)

Bartley

This isn't actually supported by Bower, is it? – Brackett

As far as I can tell, it's not part of the spec yet: github.com/bower/bower.json-spec/pull/27 – Brackett

Is there a particular version of Bower you need for this to work? I've got the latest 1.7.1 and this does not work. – Kantos

Answer 4

Add it to your .gitignore if you commit your dependencies. Otherwise leave it as it makes no difference. You should just use what you need and ignore the rest.

Kaoliang

I don't commit the dependencies already. so I understand it's not possible to skip it and I will leave it like this. thanks – Granular

I don't think this is the way to go... a shrinkwrap is very necessary – Rehash

It does make a difference when you are bundling your scripts but want to leave out libraries that are loaded off a CDN. I've installed an angular library via bower that I'm bundling with my js application, but I'm serving angular itself via google CDN. Having bower ignoring this dep makes the bundling way easier. – Venerate

It also affects users using an IDE; e.g. I don't want all the bootstrap CSS classes clouding my autocomplete. – Maestricht

I'm in the CDN scenario too. – Proctology

Answer 5

The above answers are correct but an additional solution is to use wiredep as explained in this answer:

grunt-bower-install: exclude certain components

After installing grunt-wiredep, you can add something similar to this to your Grunt.js to exclude jquery from being injected:

// Automatically inject Bower components into the app
wiredep: {
  options: {},
  app: {
    src: ['<%= my.app %>/index.html'],
    exclude: ['bower_components/jquery']
  }
},

Bower will still download jquery unfortunately but at least you can tell it not to be included in the HTML src.

Activity

Answer 6

DISCLAIMER: This doesn't fix your particular problem, but it helped with mine, so maybe it'll help other people.

I'm using grunt-bower-task to pull the files into a lib directory. I wanted to exclude "angular" and just include "angular.js". One of my dependencies was pulling in "angular". In my bower.json I now have:

{
  "name": "myapp",
  "version": "0.0.1",
  "dependencies": {
    "angular.js": "1.3.15",
    "angular-bootstrap": "0.13.0",
    "angular-cookies": "1.3.15",
    "angular-storage": "0.5.0",
    "angular-ui-router": "0.2.15",
    "mjolnic-bootstrap-colorpicker": "2.1"
  },
  "exportsOverride": {
    "angular": {
      "dump": "*.xxx"
    },
    "angular.js": {
      "js": [ "*.js", "*.js.map" ],
      "css": "*.css"
    }
  },
  "resolutions": {
    "angular": "1.3.15"
  }
} 

In my gruntfile.js I have:

bower: {
    install: {
        options: {
            targetDir: './lib',
            layout: 'byType',
            install: true,
            cleanTargetDir: true,
            cleanBowerDir: false
        }
    }
},

This stops the "angular" files from being copied to the destination.

Uhf