dist folder ignored in bower.json

[GeoffreyFrogeye]

I mean, this probably the most useful folder when you use it with bower. Why ignore it?

[amorey]

Bower is usually used for accessing the source code (e.g. sass) so you can build your own custom distribution:
https://www.muicss.com/docs/v1/css-js/customization

Can you show me an example of where it's useful to access the dist folder from Bower?

[GeoffreyFrogeye]

It may be useful when developing a small project that doesn't have a build system, so you can use the bower component right after issuing bower install, and you don't have to figure out how to build the component, nor you have to rebuild it each time you run bower install (not that it's difficult, especially with mui). Most components do that (e.g. jquery, bootstrap, d3).

[amorey]

Is it easier to use the .css files from bower as opposed to hot linking from the CDN? Here's boilerplate which includes links to the CDN:
https://www.muicss.com/docs/v1/css-js/boilerplate-html

It seems like the bootstrap-sass-official bower package only includes the source files:
https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap-sass/blob/master/bower.json

I'm curious to hear more about how you're using bower and why it's more useful to access pre-built distribution files from bower over the CDN or the download package.

[GeoffreyFrogeye]

I personally prefer to serve the files locally rather than from a CDN, for security and reliability reasons. It's not that I don't trust the CDN, but for developing an application that manipulates sensible data (such as passwords) or can be ran on an infrastructure that may have a proxy which could block the CDN for whatever reason, proceeding this way is better.

Bootstrap-sass doesn't seem to have pre-built files on its git server, however, mui does, which is a good point, because the only obstacle blocking the pre-built files to be included in bower is this little line in bower.json.

Using pre-built files with bower is really useful when you can't/won't use a CDN (e.g. reasons mentioned above), and you can't/won't configure a build system (e.g. for small projects, or when you don't have time to do so). You just have to point yours link and script tags to the correct file in bower_components folder (or whatever name you gave it), and you're good to go. What's more useful, you just can run bower update and all your dependencies are up to date. However, currently with mui I need to use a git submodule, and update it separately, which is less practical than bower.

Let me insist on the fact that's it's only one line to remove, which will benefit some users and won't disturb others (apart from some extra files downloaded, I don't think it's a problem).
It's a matter of opinion, really, so I won't blame anybody if it's not done so 😄.

[amorey]

Added 'dist' directory to bower.json in v0.1.15 via 45dfd7d

You can also download the pre-built package as a zip file from the MUI website:
https://www.muicss.com

[GeoffreyFrogeye]

Thanks :-)