Parachute

A simple utility for managing shared assets across many applications.

Requires Node >=0.10 and Git >=1.8.5

Below are the docs for v0.x.x.

v1.x.x docs are still a work in progress. Feel free to check out the tests for examples.

Installation

Parachute is a Node module available through npm. To install it globally, run:

npm install parachute -g

Alternatively, you can add it to your project's package.json under devDependencies:

"devDependencies": {
  "parachute": "latest"
}

Configuration

Assets should be hosted in a git repository, either locally or more commonly, in a remote repository.

Client

Dependencies are listed in parachute.json, and have the following options:

• src - Relative path for local git repository directory, or URL to remote repository. [Required]
• root - Root directory for files copied on install. Destinations dictated by a host's components option or a client dependency's files option are relative to this value. [Default: current working directory]
• files - Array of specific files to copy from host. Array elements can either be a string of the filename (which gets copied into the root folder) or an object with a src and dest property.

Client options:

• scripts - Commands to execute at predefined points in the install process. The following are recognized: preresolve, postresolve, preinstall, and postinstall.

• Treeish - Dependencies can point to a specific commit or branch using the following example syntax: [e-mail]:crowdtap/assets.shared.git#some-branch.

Example:

{
  "dependencies": [
    {
      "src": "../local-shared-assets/"
    },
    {
      "src": "[e-mail]:crowdtap/assets.shared.git",
      "root": "shared/",
      "files": [
        "manifest.json",
        {
          "src": "css/",
          "dest": "css/shared/"
        },
        {
          "src": "images/logo.png",
          "dest": "public/images/ct-logo.png"
        }
      ]
    }
  ],
  "scripts": {
    "preinstall": "rm -rf shared/"
  }
}

Host

If there is no parachute.json file present in the host repo, then all files will be copied into the client side at the current directory or based on the root option (if any).

If you would like to have clients copy only certain files by default, you can provide a components option in parachute.json:

{
  "components": [
    "css/mixins.less",
    {
      "src":   "assets/images/",
      "dest": "public/shared/images/"
    },
    {
      "src": "css/bootstrap.less",
      "dest": "css/boostrap/index.less"
    }
  ]
}

Note: The client's files option takes precedence over the host's components option.

Usage

Installing your dependencies is as simple as:

parachute install

To update dependencies before installing them:

parachute install --update

For more usage information, run parachute -h.

Contributing

1. Clone the repo: git clone https://github.com/crowdtap/parachute.git.
2. Install dependencies: npm install.
3. Fire up a watch script to auto-compile source files: npm run-script watch.
4. Write tests under src/test (see: pseudo-repositories). Run them: npm test.
5. Write your feature(s).
6. Open a pull request!

Pseudo-repositories

Parachute integration tests rely on git repositories. Since we want to be able to control and track changes to local repositories, we opted for pseudo repositories rather than git submodules (since they only work for remote repositories).

The pseudo-repositories under test/repos work by tracking the .git directory under a folder named git (note the lack of a leading dot). A preinstall script does a cp -R git .git for each test repository, essentially converting them into real git repositories and allowing our tests to recognize them as such.

To make an update to a test repository:

1. cd into the directory under test/repos.
2. mv git .git
3. Make your changes and commit as you normally would.
4. mv .git git

Versioning

This project follows the Semantic Versioning system.

License

Copyright (c) 2014 Crowdtap.

Licensed under the MIT License.