Bower replacement in Visual Studio 2017 ASP.NET MVC Core Template

Question

Lately I created a ASP.NET MVC Core project from scratch using Visual Studio 2017 (15.6.3). I discovered the usual JavaScript frameworks:

• bootstrap
• jquery

Answer 1

Bower is actually dead.

Microsoft have a lightweight and currently under the radar solution to this called Library Manager (LibMan).

It's a stripped down json based solution, with a very simple UI - that gives you control over which files to download (no more downloading hundreds of files when you just need 1).

Mads Kristensen did a great little intro to the preview at Build 2017. (the video should start at the correct place around 43 mins).

At the time of writing this it's still in preview - but due to be released with Visual Studio 15.8.

If you'd like to try it before that you can grab it from the GitHub Repo or Visual Studio Marketplace - instructions in the solution to this question

You can still use npm etc - though here are Microsoft's reasons for using this instead (or as well as) - from the Visual Studio Marketplace:

Reasons for using this extension

• For apps not currently using another package manager
• For projects where you think Bower and npm are overkill
• For developers that don't want to use Bower or npm
• For developers that values simplicity in their tools
• For using custom or private packages/files
• For ASP.NET Core apps where NuGet can't install content packages