Stop using bower

[outoftime]

We currently use Bower to install the libraries that are available to project code, e.g. jQuery, lodash, etc. This is a good fit since Bower by default ships packages in the old “put a global variable on window” form, which is exactly what Popcode projects expect.

However, Bower itself discourages people from using it, so we should probably migrate away from it. Ideally, we could just install the same packages via npm and load the pre-built standalone script into the preview frame. But there’s no guarantee that’s possible—lodash, for instance, does not appear to ship with a pre-built standalone script in its npm package.

A couple of other options (all kind of complicated and not terribly appealing) come to mind:

• Create a webpack entrypoint for each library, then load the desired ones directly from the preview frame using <script> tags. This has the advantage of maintaining the expected behavior associated with loading scripts the old-fashioned way
• Bundle all the libraries as part of the preview support script, but have the preview expose only the ones that are enabled as properties on window. This might get tricky with evaluation order, but has the advantage of not creating a proliferation of webpack entrypoints, and avoids the possibly vexing task of capturing the right reference to a bundle entrypoint to use in the <script> tag

[alecmerdler]

@outoftime I have a decent amount of experience transitioning legacy codebases to Webpack, I could be willing to pick up this issue.