NPM is a Javascript and Node.js package manager and task runner. Starting with VuFind® 9.0, it has been configured to run several tasks for front end manipulation and packaging. Earlier VuFind® releases relied on Grunt.

To setup NPM to run, first install node and run “npm install” to install all the dependencies in package.json.

These tasks build artifacts in the themes through a one-time action.

Generates any artifacts that require pre-processing inside all available themes. As of this writing, this is an alias for npm run build:css, but this could change in the future.

Generates any CSS files that require pre-processing inside all available themes. As of this writing, this is an alias for npm run build:less, but as VuFind® evolves, if we migrate to different technologies, we plan to maintain this alias, so your development routines will not be disrupted.

Using “npm run build:css” instead is recommended; see above.

Compiles all less files into a compressed css file. This script will detect themes inside of your themes directory and build the proper paths for you.

To use:

npm run build:less

Compiles all sass files into a compressed css file. This script will detect themes inside of your themes directory and build the proper paths for you.

npm run build:scss

Converts all less files to sass. Mostly for the VuFind® dev team.

These tasks are equivalent to the similarly-named build tasks above, but they produce development-mode artifacts that allow more detailed debugging.

• build-dev
• build-dev:css
• build-dev:less

These tasks run a monitoring process to automatically run the associated build / development build task whenever files are edited. This can be useful during active development.

• watch
• watch:css
• watch:less
• watch:lessToSass
• watch-dev
• watch-dev:css
• watch-dev:less