JavaTMP Bootstrap Template Documentation Index

Setting Up Development Environment

Doing things manually is fine once but if you can automate things it’s better. With little tools you can speed up development and reduce recursive mundane tasks such as starting a project or setting up boilerplate code. We will show you how to set up and test a development environment on Windows. don’t forget to take a backup of any folder or file before changing anythings.

Install Git

Some Node package need Git SCM to work so first install Git if you don’t have it. Go to their official site and download a git client version, Or choose whatever fork you’d like like Git for Windows.

Install Node.js

Gulp depend on Node.js and NPM so you need to get Node.js. Just download the installation package from Node.js site and click through it.

create a package.json file

To create package.json file, you can run npm init command and go through its options or manually create the file based on node official site package.json rules.

Using npm init command to create the package.json will prompt you for values for the package.json fields. The two required fields are name and version. You’ll also want to have a value for main. You can use the default, index.js.

Here’s a simple package.json:

{
  "name": "application name",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "your application description",
  "main": "index.js",
  "scripts": {
    "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1",
  },
  "author": "You",
  "license": "",
  "dependencies": {},
  "devDependencies": {}
}

Please go to our package.json file in the JavaTMP root directory to get more information about our dependencies and tools.

Install Gulp

To automate and enhance your development you can use Gulp to automate and run a predefine tasks. We Installed Gulp globally with npm:

npm install --global gulp

Install Gulp also in your project devDependencies (package.json’s devDependencies):

npm install --save-dev gulp

Create gulpfile.js

we need to create the gulpfile.js which defines our tasks we want to perform. Then, add the following to your gulpfile.js:

var gulp = require('gulp');

gulp.task('Generic_Task', function () {
    process.stdout.write("*** Start Generic Task @ [" + new Date() + "] ***")
});

gulp.task('default', ['Generic_Task'], function () {
    process.stdout.write("*** Finished @ [" + new Date() + "] ***")
});

The default task runs nothing but print the date and time. You can run this gulpfile.js through the following gulp command:

gulp

Please review ./gulpfile.js and ./package.json for more information about gulp plugins and tasks used in the project.

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