gruntjs - Can/should Grunt be used with Bower without Npm?

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I am a little confused
about the use of Npm, Bower and Grunt. My objective is to install frontend packages
(e.g.: bootstrap) for my front-end project and have Grunt set up to automate build
tasks.

I have been using Npm in the past and I
understand that it works with the package.json file, while Bower works uses the
bower.json file. In this case, I installed Grunt with Bower (not Npm), however I
realised that in order to run Grunt I still need to add the package.json
file.

• Should I have been
  using Bower to install Grunt at the first place ?


• Does my
  project always need the package.json file to use Grunt? And
  if so, are there
  any good practices for dealing with the duplication
  between the bower.json and
  package.json files. (name, version of the app,
  etc…)

Thanks

Answer

1. grunt (grunt-cli) is
   command line task runner, not frontend library :), so installing it via bower is
   strange, but possible due to the fact that bower is using npm as base repository
   :)


2. package.json store all tool dependencies in your
   project - like bower or
   grunt

In frontend
development bower should be handling css/js libraries in your app like jQuery,
Angular.js, Bootstrap. NPM is for node.js extensions/utilities like grunt, karma
devDependencies.

href="http://blog.nodejitsu.com/package-dependencies-done-right/"
rel="nofollow">http://blog.nodejitsu.com/package-dependencies-done-right/