mdb-ui-kit/docs/getting-started/build-tools.md

layout	title	group
docs	Build tools	getting-started

Material Design for Bootstrap uses Grunt for its CSS and JavaScript build system and Jekyll for the written documentation. Our Gruntfile includes convenient methods for working with the framework, including compiling code, running tests, and more.

Tooling setup

To use our Gruntfile and run our documentation locally, you'll need a copy of Material Design for Bootstrap's source files, Node, and Grunt. Follow these steps and you should be ready to rock:

1. Download and install Node, which we use to manage our dependencies.
2. Install the Grunt command line tools, grunt-cli, with npm install -g grunt-cli.
3. Navigate to the root /bootstrap-material-design directory and run npm install to install our local dependencies listed in package.json.
4. Install RVM
5. Install ruby. cd bootstrap-material-design and if installation is needed, it will give an install command such as To install do: 'rvm install ruby-2.x.x'
6. Install Bundler with gem install bundler
7. Finally run bundle install. This will install all Ruby dependencies, such as Jekyll and plugins.

• Windows users: Read this unofficial guide to get Jekyll up and running without problems.

When completed, you'll be able to run the various Grunt commands provided from the command line.

Using Grunt

Our Gruntfile includes the following commands and tasks:

Task	Description
grunt	Run grunt to run tests locally and compile the CSS and JavaScript into /dist. Uses Sass, Autoprefixer, and UglifyJS.
grunt dist	grunt dist creates the /dist directory with compiled files. Uses Sass, Autoprefixer, and UglifyJS.
grunt test	Runs scss-lint, ESLint and QUnit tests headlessly in PhantomJS (used for CI).
grunt docs	Builds and tests CSS, JavaScript, and other assets which are used when running the documentation locally via jekyll serve.
grunt watch	This is a convenience method for watching just Sass files and automatically building them whenever you save.

Switching Sass compilers

Material Design for Bootstrap will be compiled with libsass by default, but you can opt into traditional Ruby Sass by setting the MDB_SASS environment variable. Two options are supported:

• libsass (default) to use libsass via grunt-sass.
• sass to use Ruby Sass via grunt-contrib-sass.

For example, run MDB_SASS=sass grunt to test and build Material Design for Bootstrap with Ruby Sass.

Autoprefixer

Material Design for Bootstrap uses Autoprefixer (included in our Gruntfile and build process) to automatically add vendor prefixes to some CSS properties at build time. Doing so saves us time and code by allowing us to write key parts of our CSS a single time while eliminating the need for vendor mixins like those found in v3.

Local documentation

Running our documentation locally requires the use of Jekyll, a flexible static site generator that provides us basic includes, markdown-based files, templates, and more. Here's how to get it started:

1. Run through the tooling setup above to install Jekyll (the site builder) and other Ruby dependencies with bundle install.
2. From the root /bootstrap-material-design directory, run bundle exec jekyll serve in the command line.
3. Open http://localhost:9001 in your browser, and voilà.

Learn more about using Jekyll by reading its documentation.

Local development setup

The development and testing with the documentation has been connected so we not only can utilize Material Design examples, but all of the original Bootstrap documentation examples as well. The most productive environment so far is to have Bootstrap checked out in parallel to this project, running three (3) different terminal commands simultaneously:

1. Terminal 1: Bootstrap documentation for reference

   1. Performs an initial dependency setup/build

      bundle install && npm install && bower install && grunt dist

   2. Start serving the documentation on http://localhost:9000

      jekyll serve

2. Terminal 2: Initial build and watch

   1. Performs an initial dependency setup/build

      bundle install && npm install && bower install && grunt dist

   2. Watch both the core and docs sources for changes

      grunt watch

3. Terminal 3: Start serving documentation on http://localhost:9001 with jekyll serve

Now go forth and develop, the watch task will keep tabs on source files and docs files, meanwhile the jekyll serve command will generate new documentation pages with the changes. Simply refresh your browser to see the changes.

(TODO: someone please investigate adding autoreload to jekyll development cycle)

Troubleshooting

Should you encounter problems with installing dependencies or running Grunt commands, uninstall all previous dependency versions (global and local). Then, rerun npm install.