These are the tools and practices currently used by the development team in Habitat.
You must install these to get Habitat running on your computer:
- PowerShell version 5 or later
- Visual Studio 2017 and .NET 4.6.
- Within VS2017, install these extensions:
- Web Compiler
- ASP.NET MVC for the user interface patterns
- On Windows 10, this is enabled by going to:
- Turn Windows Features On or Off
- Select ASP.NET 4.7 from Internet Information Services > World Wide Web Services > Application Development Features
- On Windows 10, this is enabled by going to:
- Node.JS 4+. Please use the latest LTS version of Node (as of publishing, this is 8.11.3)
These are additional tools used in Habitat's creation. You do not need to install these just to run Habitat:
- Css Extension Language: Sass
- Front end framework: Bootstrap 3
- Package management: NuGet, Node (npm) and Bower
- Build scripts: Gulp
- Item serialisation: Unicorn 4
- Windows PowerShell 4.0+ required to sync Unicorn via Gulp task
- Bug-tracking: GitHub
- CI server: TeamCity
- Unit tests: xUnit
- Specification Testing: SpecFlow
- Environment: Visual C++ Redistributable Packages for Visual Studio 2013 (required only for Foundation.Installer module)
Sitecore does not endorse any particular third-party tool. The tools in the current release were chosen because of a number of reasons, including popularity and ease of licensing. Habitat is an example to show you how you can use these tools to accomplish a feature complete and functional solution. This does not preclude using other tools in your Helix solutions, or changing any third-party tool for another depending on feedback from the Sitecore community.
The project uses the Bootstrap theme implemented in Sitecore.Demo.Theme
A separate fork of the Habitat project with support for Team Development for Sitecore (TDS) is maintained by Hedgehog Development. The Habitat TDS branch can be found here
If you are interested in using an ORM tool like Glass or Synthesis with Habitat, please refer to these examples: