Taaabs is a single page application using Polymer and running in a browser. Taaabs is written in HTML and JavaScript. Taaabs use gulp as Task-Runner/build tool, npm and bower for dependency management. Theses tools needs Node.js runtime environment.

node and npm should be installed with your distribution package manager (apt-get, yum, pacman…) if possible and if the version packaged for your distribution is the actual stable Node.js version. At least you need a node version >= 0.12.7 and npm version >= 2.14.1.

You can check theses version with node –version and npm –version.

If your distribution package manager cannot, no problem, you can download and install node (since v0.12, npm is packaged inside node, so you don't need to install it separatly) Download Node.js.

Assuming now you have node, npm properly installed.

We use npm for installing build tools and build dependencies.

git clone git@github.com:liris-tweak/taaabs.git

cd taaabs/

Then, you need to install gulp, as an executable application. [sudo] npm install -g gulp will install gulp for you in /usr/lib/node_modules/ and the executable will be available as a link on /usr/bin.

Now you can try the command gulp in your terminal. If you see in the standard output something like “local gulp not found”, you have succefully installed gulp.

If you got a message like gulp: command not found, please read Installing npm packages globally and thisFixing npm permissions

The gulp working principle is to check the configuration file of a project and perform the tasks described there. This configuration file is named by convention 'gulpfile.js'. To run the task 'foo' described in the configuration, you write gulp foo.

Then, you can install bower, as an executable application. [sudo] npm install -g bower will install bower for you in the same way as explained before.

Now you can try the command bower in your terminal. If bower is installed correctly you can see a short manual about how to use bower. A thorough reading of this message is not necessary, but might be entertaining.

Then, you must fetch the build dependencies of the project: npm install -d. When you run this command, npm read the package.json file which contains developers dependencies. By default, theses dependencies are stored in the node_modules/ directory at the root of the project. The -d option in npm means that you want to install the dependencies declared as “devDependencies” in the package.json file.

Then, you must fetch the client-side dependencies of the project: bower install. bower will read the bower.json and by default theses dependencies are stored in the bower_components/ directory at the root of the project.

We use JSHint to check suspicious usage in the JavaScript code inside Taaabs. This application take JavaScript code, parse it, and do some syntaxic/semantic checking.

When building Taaabs (using gulp command), JSHint run a check on all files inside app/ directory. <note warning>If you ignore these warnings, the building process cannot complete.</note>

We suggest you to I suggest that you regularly scan your code using

app/: Directory containing sources of the application.

bower.json: A file describing client-side dependencies of the project.

bower_components/: Directory containing client-side dependencies.

dist/: Contains the “production” files (this directory can be served by an HTTP server like Apache, Nginx)

gulpfile.js: File describing the build process.

node_modules/: Directory containing build dependencies (or server-side dependencies for Node.js based server applications).

package.json: A file describing build dependencies of the project. (usually this folder contains server-side dependencies for Node.js based server applications)

.bowerrc: Configuration file for bower

.jscsrc: configuration file for JSCS (JSCS is a code style linter for programmatically enforcing your style guide).

.jshintrc: configuration file for JSHint (JSHint is a tools to detect suspicious usage in programs written in JavaScript).

wct.conf.json: A file desbribing Unit tests

When you are modifing sources files of Taaabs, you can see a continuous updated version on your browser. To do this, use gulp serve, and open http://localhost:3000/ in Chromium browser or Chrome browser.

gulp simpleserver

Then open http://localhost:8080/dist/ .