How to Install Bower on Debian 9/8

Bower is a famous JavaScript framework for hybrid mobile application development for seamless native-like experiences. This tutorial will help you to install Node.js, NPM, and Bower on a Debian system.

Step 1 – Prerequsites

Login to your Debian system using root or sudo privilege user and update the current packages to latest version.

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get upgrade

Step 2 – Install Node.js

Bower required Node.js to be installed on the system. Use following set of commands to add node.js PPA on your Debian system and install.

sudo apt-get install software-properties-common
curl -sL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_9.x | sudo -E bash -
sudo apt-get install nodejs

Make sure you have successfully installed node.js and NPM on your system

node --version
npm --version

Step 3 – Install Bower on Debian

After installation of node.js and npm on your system. Use the following commands to install Bower on Debian.

sudo npm install -g bower

The Bower has been installed. Let’s check the installed version of bower on your system using the following command.

bower --version

1.8.4

Step 4 – Using Bower

To install a package using bower run command as:

bower install PACKAGE_NAME

You can also create a bower.json file for your package using bower init. At runtime you can use --save option to save new installed packages bower.json to your using the following command.

bower install PACKAGE_NAME --save

Here are some more useful commands for bower to install and manage packages:

## Install all packages from bower.json 
bower install

## Install Registered packages
bower install PACKAGE_NAME

## Using the github in shortform
bower install github_user/package

## Using complete git endpoint
bower install git://github.com/user/package.git

## From HTTP URL
bower install http://example.com/script.js