"What's bower?" "A package manager, install it with npm." "What's npm?" "A package manager, you can install it with brew" "What's brew?" ...

— Stefan Baumgartner (@ddprrt) November 5, 2014

All jokes aside (for now at least), the Ushahidi Platform requires a few steps to get started.

Download or Clone from Github

• Visit Github to download the repo to your local environment
• or use git clone

                            
                                git clone https://github.com/ushahidi/platform-pattern-library.git
                            
                        

Install Dev Dependencies

You will need to install the following dependencies to run the Ushahidi Platform.

• NodeJS - Install via Homebrew or the NodeJS homepage
• Bower
• Browserify
• Gulp

After installing NodeJS, run the following commands to install each dev dependency globally.

                            
                                npm install -g bower
                                npm install -g browserify
                                npm install -g gulp
                            
                        

Install Required Packages

After installing the dev dependencies you will need to install the following packages:

Bower

• Bourbon (more info here)
• Neat (more info here)
• Font Awesome (more info here)

Node

• Gulp plugins (these plugins are used for a variety of build tasks located within gulpfile.js)
• The Ushahidi Platform uses node-sass (via the gulp-sass plugin), which is a node front end for LibSass. We chose Libsass over RubySass because of its speed and Node over Ruby dependency.
• Watchify

Navigate to the root of your project and install these Node and Bower packages by simply running ...

                            
                                npm install
                            
                        

This will install both NPM and Bower dependencies!

No separate bower install command is required.

Download and Activate Live Reload Plugin

http://feedback.livereload.com/knowledgebase/articles/86242-how-do-i-install-and-use-the-browser-extensions

Navigate to project root and run ...

                            
                                gulp build
                            
                        

• compiles sass into assets/css
• minifies and concatenates js into assets/js/app.js
• builds html files into assets/html
• generates font files into assets/fonts
• generates font sass files into assets/sass/utils/font-awesome

                            
                                gulp
                            
                        

• starts a webserver accessible at http://localhost:8080/
• watches the project directory for changes
• compiles sass into assets/css
• minifies and concatenates js into assets/js/app.js
• builds html files into assets/html
• live reloads appropriate files (sass, js or html)
• sends a success notification

Now visit http://localhost:8080/ to view the website in action.