yun99 / volo

Create front end projects from templates, add dependencies, and automate the resulting projects

volo

Create browser-based, front-end projects from project templates, and add dependencies by fetching them from GitHub. Once your project is set up, automate common tasks.

volo is dependency manager and project creation tool that favors GitHub for the package repository.

At its heart, volo is a generic command runner -- you can create new commands for volo, and you can use commands others have created.

By default, volo knows how to:

• create a new web project
• add scripts for a web project from the command line
• automate project actions via volofiles and reusable volo commands

Prerequisites

• Node 0.6.5 or later installed.

If you are using Ubuntu, then you may need to apt-get install nodejs-legacy too.

Install

volo requires Node to run. Node includes npm, a package manager for node code. To install volo:

npm install -g volo

If you get an error when running that command, and it contains this line somwhere in it:

npm ERR! Please try running this command again as root/Administrator.

You will need to run the install via sudo:

sudo npm install -g volo

Usage

volo can use GitHub to retrieve code, so one of the core concepts when using it is understanding user/repo for archive names. See the add doc for more info on the types of archive names to use.

AMD project example

To set up an AMD/RequireJS-based project called fast that uses AMD versions of Backbone, jQuery and underscore:

> volo create fast (uses [volojs/create-template](https://github.com/volojs/create-template) for project template)
> cd fast
> volo add jquery (uses jquery/jquery as the repo)
> volo add underscore (uses amdjs/underscore as repo since an AMD project)
> volo add backbone (uses amdjs/backbone as repo since an AMD project)

Then modify www/js/app.js to require the modules you need and add your app logic.

The above example uses the amdjs/underscore and amdjs/backbone versions of those libraries, which include integrated AMD support.

Browser globals project example

To set up an HTML5 Boilerplate project that does not use AMD/RequireJS, but does use documentcloud repos of Backbone and Underscore (the Boilerplate already has jQuery):

> volo create html5fast html5-boilerplate (pulls down latest tag of that repo)
> cd html5fast
> volo add underscore (uses documentcloud/underscore as repo)
> volo add backbone (uses documentcloud/backbone as repo)

Updating a previously added library

There is no "update" command in Volo. However, updating a library is simple:

> volo add -f underscore

This will delete your local copy of underscore and then re-add underscore.

Library Best Practices

To work well with volo, here are some tips on how to structure your library code:

• Library Best Practices

Details

• Design goals
• Prior Art: npm, cpm, bpm.
• Create a volo command
• Create a volofile
• License: MIT and new BSD.

Engage

• Discussion list
• File an issue
• Working with the volo code