Handling of External Javascript and CSS Components
==================================================
This directory (``static/``) holds a number of subdirectories, where one is
handled differently than the rest: the ``lib/`` subdirectory holds
distribution files for external client-side components, currently (28 Jul
2015) this means ``js`` and ``css`` components and fonts.
These components each reside in their own subdirectory, which is named with
the component name:
henrik@zinfandel $ ls -l static/lib
total 52
drwxr-xr-x 5 henrik henrik 4096 Jul 26 08:55 admin
drwxr-xr-x 6 henrik henrik 4096 Jul 25 15:25 bootstrap
drwxr-xr-x 4 henrik henrik 4096 Jul 25 15:25 bootstrap-datepicker
drwxr-xr-x 5 henrik henrik 4096 Jul 28 02:39 custom-bootstrap
drwxr-xr-x 4 henrik henrik 4096 Jul 25 15:25 font-awesome
drwxr-xr-x 2 henrik henrik 4096 Jul 25 15:25 jquery
drwxr-xr-x 2 henrik henrik 4096 Jul 25 15:25 jquery.cookie
drwxr-xr-x 2 henrik henrik 4096 Jul 25 15:24 ptmono
drwxr-xr-x 2 henrik henrik 4096 Jul 25 15:24 ptsans
drwxr-xr-x 2 henrik henrik 4096 Jul 25 15:24 ptserif
drwxr-xr-x 2 henrik henrik 4096 Jul 25 15:25 select2
drwxr-xr-x 2 henrik henrik 4096 Jul 25 15:25 select2-bootstrap-css
drwxrwxrwx 3 henrik henrik 4096 Jul 27 11:42 static
If resources served over a CDN and/or with a high max-age don't have different
URLs for different versions, then any component upgrade which is accompanied
by a change in template functionality will be have a long transition time
during which the new pages are served with old components, with possible
breakage. We want to avoid this.
The intention is that after a release has been checked out, but before it is
deployed, the whole static directory should be symlinked or copied to a
location which is accessible under the URL given by STATIC_URL -- in
production mode this URL contains the datatracker release version, which will
let the CDN serve the static files which correspond to the current release.
With the exception of the ``pt*`` fonts and ``custom-bootstrap``, the
components under ``static/lib/`` are managed through a bower_ file;
``ietf/bower.json``. In order to install a new version of a component, you
should update the ``bower.json`` file, and then run the management command::
$ ietf/manage.py bower_install
That command will fetch the required version of each external component listed
in ``bower.json`` (actually, it will do this for *all* ``bower.json`` files
found in all ``INSTALLED_APPS`` directories), saving them temporarily under
``.tmp/bower_components/``; it will then extract the relevant ``js`` and
``css`` files and place them in an appropriately named directory under
``static/lib/``. The location used by ``bower_install`` is controlled by the
``COMPONENT_ROOT`` setting in ``settings.py``.
Any datatracker-specific static files which should be served by the CDN rather
than directly by the datatracker web server should be moved from under
``static/`` to ``ietf/static/``, so that they will be collected by the
``ietf/manage.py collectstatic`` command and placed under `static/lib/`` from
where they will be made available to the CDN. Any template files referencing
the files in question will need to be updated to use the ``{% static
'foo/bar.jpg' %}`` notation to reference the files, so that the correct static
url will be emitted both in production and development mode.
.. _bower: http://bower.io/
