Component support

[holtkamp]

As suggested in https://github.com/DataTables/DataTables/issues/393

[DataTables]

"robloach/component-installer": "*"

Is that required as a component? I haven't had a chance to read through the documentation linked in #393 yet.

Regarding 1.9.4, it would mean a 1.9.5 release and I have no plans to make such a release - 1.9.x is no longer in development.

[holtkamp]

yeah, that dependency is required. It contains the suggested "Component" functionality to copy the files that are downloaded by Composer to an indicated place, where they can be served by the webserver.

I understand your stance concerning the 1.9.x branch, will try to find time for an upgrade to 1.10.x...

[holtkamp]

Are there any aspects blocking this PR from being merged?

[DataTables]

Just time - I haven't had a chance to read the background material yet. I'm not massively keen on introducing the dependency, but if that how Composer packages are generally done then I'll consider it (I'd be interested to know what other packages use it - for example Bootstrap doesn't).

[holtkamp]

well, it actually is: https://packagist.org/packages/components/bootstrap

But I think you got a point about the introduced dependency. One can see a lot of "shim" repositories here: https://github.com/components. Maybe that is a more appropriate place... Up to you to decide ;)

[DataTables]

I don't quite understand I'm afraid. The Bootstrap source repo doesn't appear to have any dependencies, unless I'm misreading their composer file.

It looks like there might be a shim for it to make it compatible with that form of packaging.

[holtkamp]

Mmm, indeed, I guess then I will remove the dependency on

"robloach/component-installer": "*",

That way it is up to the end-user how he/she wants to deal with Composer packages of type "component"

[holtkamp]

I noticed somebody created a 'shim' repo for this, closing PR:
https://packagist.org/packages/components/datatables

[nickdietel]

the repo provided isn't maintained any longer, any way we can get the composer.json updated as suggested?

[DataTables]

Adding an external dependency is not something I what to have to do.

[holtkamp]

@nickdietel, try this approach for asset management:
https://github.com/francoispluchino/composer-asset-plugin

It supports the bower.json dependencies, so no need for other 'component' stuff. Deleting branch.

[nickdietel]

@holtkamp I had a try with the 'composer-asset-plugin'. Indeed it works quite nice, however, there are some drawbacks with this plugin as mentioned by the plugin author. i.e. you need to install the plugin into global prior using it. Please see this post Use Nodejs for Bower and NPM

You might want to check out BowerPHP as an alternative
BowerPHP: https://github.com/Bee-Lab/bowerphp

Still I would prefer using the component-installer. Actually, having the extra:component section included in the composer.json would make the datatables much more useful to everybody.