Re: Angular 2 without NPM

[Michael Prentice]

Angular CLI is the easiest way to get started with Angular 2+, but it's still in beta and requires NodeJS.

Is your problem with NodeJS, the open-source community built tooling, or NPM, the private company who manages a repository of NodeJS modules? 

NodeJS installation on OS X is very simple and the majority of modern web development has moved over to it for at least tooling (if not for actual hosting/deployment too).

If NPM is specifically your issue, then you can use Yarn, but it may still pull from the NPM-managed repositories.

If you want something without most of the performance benefits of Angular 2+, then you can do something like the Quickstart Plunker in your project... it uses SystemJS to do the minimal module loading in the client. 

Of course the tooling (much of it based on NodeJS) is a big part of what enables the great performance seen in Angular 2+ via AOT compilation, Universal (server-side rendering), etc.

I'm not sure how your mention of .NET Entity Framework is related. I thought that you were using OS X due to your mention of CodeKit? Either way, you certainly don't have to configure .NET Entity Framework to use Angular 2+.

Michael Prentice

DevIntent

GDG Space Coast

On Thursday, January 26, 2017 at 2:35:30 PM UTC-5, TheRyanSmee wrote:

I have been using Angular1 for a little while for web development projects in and outside of work.

I am about to start a new project and am torn between sticking to Angular1 or getting stuck into Angular2 so that I can reap all the performance benefits I have been hearing about.

The only thing holding me back from this leap is the fact that I really don't want to use Node. I'm not against TypeScript, in fact I really like it! I just like to let CodeKit take care of all of my prepossessing.

I have looked high and low but I can't seem to find a simple way of downloading and getting started with Angular2. Everything I find is either incredibly out of date or has a whole bunch of other stuff bundled in (bootstrap etc). I know that due to the .NET Entity Framework, decoupled style of Angular2, its never going to be as easy as the '1 click download and away we go' that we had with Angular 1, but surely there must be a middle group?

Anyone that can help or has any suggestions, please jump in.

[Arlo]

Angular2 is worth the switch IMO.

Modern JavaScript developers basically need Node on their development machine for all the command-line tools: npm, angular-cli, etc.

I don't know anything about CodeKit.

But that's completely separate from your Application Server. The only fundamental reason to use NodeJS for the server is the advantages that come from having your client and server written in the same language. For example, you could share code such as TypeScript type definitions.

Other than that, there's nothing wrong with .NET, Java Spring, Ruby on Rails, etc etc.

[Michael Prentice]

Yes, that's a good point. Using NodeJS for tooling in no way means that you need to deploy to production on a NodeJS server. You can deploy to whatever static hosting platform you desire (Firebase, Apache, Nginx, etc) or deploy in .NET, Java, RoR, or other web containers.

The Angular CLI will bundle things up for you as a static website which can be deployed in whatever way you see fit.

Michael Prentice

DevIntent

GDG Space Coast

[Sander Elias]

Hi TheRyan,

The performance gain's are in the frontend. There is nothing full-stack about Angular. (well, you can use server rendering if you want, but that's not the point here)

To be able to get those gains, the developer needs tools on his development machine, while building the app. For deployment to production, there is no need for any of those. You can host your Angular app on all hostings solutions. The end-result is just html/css/js. 

Regards

Sander

[Sander Elias]

Hi Theryansmee,

Well, if you insist on it, it is possible. You can even can typescript if you really want. I don't think it's a smart move, but it is possible.  All the tooling is written in JS or typescript and uses nodeJS and the npm registry.  So, if you don't want to use that, you have to redo a lot by yourself. 

BTW, this tooling is mostly needed for building and compiling your app. If you have another build system that takes care of this, you are pretty much settled. 

Regards

Sander