Improve build: Use NPM/bower for JS modules

[hypery2k]

I think as we can now use NPM/grunt within the maven build, we should utilize more NPM/Bower for managaging our frontend dependencies, e.g. for the tablesorter plugin. This would make it easier to update libraries

[elgalu]

Hi! I was expecting to be able to list galenframework as a dependency in my NodeJS package.json testing suite so I can point to a particular https://www.npmjs.com/package/galenframework version, e.g.:

var galen = require('galenframework');

// And then use it without cluttering the global scope
galen.test("Home page", function() {
  var driver = galen.createDriver("http://galenframework.com",
                            "1024x768");
  galen.checkLayout(driver, "homePage.spec", ["all", "desktop"]);
});

// Or cluttering the global scope to write less:
test("Home page", function() {
  var driver = createDriver("http://galenframework.com",
                            "1024x768");
  checkLayout(driver, "homePage.spec", ["all", "desktop"]);
});

[ishubin]

The JavaScript tests in Galen are a bit tricky. The way they work is that Galen is started as a Java application and it executes JavaScript tests via embedded Mozilla Rhino JavaScript executor. So I don't think that it will work like that through npm. By the way I have nothing to do with the galenframework package in npm. That is just some user uploaded galenframework and I really don't know what for.

[hypery2k]

just to mention: I've created an NPM module to install Galen: https://github.com/hypery2k/galenframework-cli

[erquhart]

This is awesome - I would say that more of this sort of things needs to happen for Galen to pick up steam with front enders (who could easily make the majority of the framework's users). The existing efforts should be documented in the repo and on the website, such as Martin's npm module and the grunt/gulp plugins that were created and linked in a separate issue. Making Galen available through these front end tools is a really big deal.

[elgalu]

Thanks @hypery2k, do you think your npm module will be able to solve

JavaScript tests via embedded Mozilla Rhino JavaScript executor

Or the scope of the project is just to install galen?

[hypery2k]

currently just to install galen. But we can later add a NPM module for that

[hypery2k]

you can use the galen-gulp plugin https://www.npmjs.com/package/gulp-galen