Ncapsulate is a NuGet wrapper for NodeJS and libraries of the Node Ecosystem. Such tools currently include Bower, Gulp, Grunt, Npm, Karma, and support is easy to add for more.
Ncapsulate's goal is to surround useful tools like NodeJS, NPM, Bower, Gulp and more while not requiring developers to install the tools or understand how to use their console, and console commands.
The goal is to make it portable and compatible with NuGet Package Restore. With those goals in mind, it allows larger .NET development teams to adopt different Front End Tools for building applicaitons, without affecting the developer that typcially works behind the scenes, and doesn't care about the front end world. While giving the Front End Developers the ability to adopt modern tools, and processes to create exceptional User Experiences.
Ncapsulate plays off the fact that Node can run as a single executable, and then uses Nuget dependencies so that you only need to install tools you plan on using.
In addition since the user is downloading Node as a Nuget package, Ncapsulate also provides extra (optional) MSBuild tasks, so that integrating any of the tools is extremely easy, and allows you to follow other build patterns, such as incremental builds, so tasks only run if they are needed. This allows JavaScript projects to only impose a 1 build slow down on Back-end developers that may not do any work in the JavaScript space.
There is an example solution that uses Ncapsulate. This example takes the latest SPA template from Visual Studio and converts it to using Ncapsualte for a few tasks.
- Dependencies are installed using Npm and Bower
- It is built with RequireJS
- Unit tests are run through Karma
- Demonstrates both Gulp and Grunt, keep in mind in most cases you'll either pick Grunt or Gulp, not both!
https://github.com/Blacklite/Ncapsulate.Example
Search for Ncapsulate.Node in the Nuget Package Manager
Install-Package Ncapsulate.Node
Once installed you will have 3 new items in your solution.
node.cmd and npm.cmd are shortcuts to run those commands from the command line without
having to install node locally for a developer. These can be "excluded" from
the project if you do not want the clutter, but they must be committed to source
control, so that they exist for the tooling to work correctly.
You will also have a new folder App_Build, this folder will contain .targets files
for each dependnency you have installed. These can be removed safely if you do not need them.
Targets are very useful though, these allow you to change your projects build without needing to manually edit the project xml, which forces you to unload the project. In these targets files we have some examples of using Inputs/Outputs to create incremental builds that only change as dependent files change.
This is the primary package, and it includes both Node and Npm since they are generally both required for anything else to work.
- Node
- NPM
This task allows you to invoke npm install without using the command line.
In addition this task also allows you to specify a specific dependency if
for example you do not want to use package.json for keeping node packages.
<NpmInstall [Module=""] />
This task allows you to invoke npm update without using the command line.
In addition this task also allows you to specify a specific dependency if
for example you do not want to use package.json for keeping node packages.
<NpmUpdate [Module=""] />
This is a package that brings in bower integration to Ncapsulate.
Installs the bower packages much like calling bower install from the command line
In addition this task also allows you to specify a specific dependency if you
for example do not want to use a bower.json file for keeping bower dependencies.
<BowerInstall [Module=""] />
Installs the bower packages much like calling bower update from the command line
In addition this task also allows you to specify a specific dependency if you
for example do not want to use a bower.json file for keeping bower dependencies.
<BowerInstall [Module=""] />
This is a package that brings in grunt integration to Ncapsulate.
Allows you to run a specific grunt task as part of your build process. Tasks
are optional and will default to default just like calling grunt from the command
line.
You can specifiy the grunt file if it differs from the default gruntfile.js, as well
as set Force and Verbose for additional needs.
<Grunt [Tasks=""] [Gruntfile=""] [Force="true|false"] [Verbose="true|false"] />
This is a package that brings in gulp integration to Ncapsulate.
Allows you to run a specific gulp task as part of your build build process. Tasks
are optional and will default to default just like calling gulp from the command
line.
You can specifiy the gulpfile if it differs from the default gulpfile.js, as well
as you can set optional parameters, since by default gulp does not have the concept
of force or verbose. Though you can define custom ones, for example being able to
have different builds for Release or Debug.
<Gulp [Tasks=""] [Gulpfile=""] [Params=""]/>
This is a package that brings in karma integration to Ncapsulate.
Starts a single run of Karma with the given settings. This allows you to customize the karam run based on various items such as browsers or reporters, much like running against the command line.
<Karma [Configfile=""] [Port=""] [LogLevel=""] [Reporters=""] [Browsers=""] [CaptureTimeout=""] [ReportSlowerThan=""] />
Build tasks are used to create additional Ncapsulate packages. The process is generally very similar per dependency so these are helper tasks that let you create a dependency with very little fuss.
Gets the version of the given npm dependency.
<GetVersion Name="bower">
<Output TaskParameter="Version" ItemName="BowerVersion" />
</GetVersion>
Installs the given modules to prepare them for being included in a nuget package.
This will also squish the node_modules directories.
NOTE: This can at times cause issues with different versions of dependences, if
there is a breaking change. So be mindful that your dependency works as expected
<InstallModule Modules="bower" />
This is a base class that can be used to execute commands against node. This is used
to construct custom tasks like <BowerInstall Name="" /> to create tasks that can
be consumed by your end users.
Any additional help would be great, I welcome any pull requests to add new dependencies that you feel might be benefical. Once we execeed 10 or so npm packages I would like break each project out into seperate git repo's to increase seperation.