d.r.y. technique for multiple dependencies with same version?

[Anthony Kerz]

i'm relatively new to the js space, so bear with me:

for this bower.json file:

{

  "name": "ng-boilerplate",

  "version": "0.3.1",

  "devDependencies": {

    "angular": "~1.2.0-rc.3",

    "angular-mocks": "~1.2.0-rc.3",

    "bootstrap": "~3.0.1",

    "angular-bootstrap": "~0.3.0",

    "angular-ui-router": "~0.0.1",

    "angular-ui-utils": "~0.0.3"

  },

  "dependencies": {}

}

angular and angular-mocks should be at the same version,

if this was a maven pom.xml file or grails build-config.groovy file which serve similar purposes,

i would be able to set a single variable to say "~1.2.0-rc.3' in the example above and refer to 

it in both the angular and angular-mocks dependencies.

is the issue here that dot-json files don't support variables like that so we are forced to repeat "~1.2.0-rc.3"

twice, or is there some trick to specify the version once and refer to it twice...?

if bower.json was more of a bower.js file, then we could use variables...?

regards,

tony. 

[Sindre Sorhus]

Nope. JSON can't have variables, and Bower will always use JSON as a package format. It's not that hard to update two lines once in a while.

[Anthony Kerz]

thanks sindre,

works for me.

to edify the uninitiated, can you very briefly summarize your rationale around preferring JSON over javascript for this configuration?

as a noob, i'm just curious about the thought process around why grunt uses script for config and others like bower and npm use json...

regards,

tony.

[Sindre Sorhus]

We want bower.json to be readable even in non-JS environments and tools. Eg. Ruby tools that reads the dependencies in bower.json. It's also heavily inspired by npm which does the same.

[Frédéric Camblor]

Hi,

Couldn't we think about something keeping the JSON format, but needing some processing after the parsing ?

Something like this :

{

  "name": "ng-boilerplate",

  "version": "0.3.1",

  "properties": { 

    "angular.version":"~1.2.0-rc.3" 

  },

  "devDependencies": {

    "angular": "${angular.version}",

    "angular-mocks": "${angular.version}",

    "bootstrap": "~3.0.1",

    "angular-bootstrap": "~0.3.0",

    "angular-ui-router": "~0.0.1",

    "angular-ui-utils": "~0.0.3"

  },

  "dependencies": {}

}

where `${..}` strings would be interpolated in json leaf values.

It would need some processing after parsing, but this is already the case with "dependencies" and "devDependencies" : different meanings for each notion.

To my POV, variabilizing versions have a greater meaning than just being lazy.

It really means "I want to use same version for both of this libs"

Typically, I might use different version names for same version values in some cases.