How to change bower's default cache folder?

Question

On *nix, bower uses the ~/.bower folder for its cache (packages and so on).
I would like to change this to a different location.

The bower spec document from suggests that I configure the storage key in my .bowerrc.

I have created one in my project folder like so:

{
  "storage": {
     "cache": "~/blah/cached",
     "git": "~/blah/git_templates"
  }
}

When running bower install - i see that it still tries to save into ~/.bower.

Can anyone tell me what I am doing wrong here ? And/or if there is a different way to change the location ?

Answer 1

I had the same problem, after some tries according the spec, I gave up...

So I reviewed bower's history on github and found:

• Before v0.10.0, bower used config.cache (lib/core/ResolveCache.js) for its cache location
• After that, satazor rewrote bower's core, now using config.storage.cache at the beginning, i bet the spec doc was written at this time. From the spec:

storage [object]

Where to store persistent data, such as cache, needed by bower. Defaults to paths that > suite the OS/platform. Valid keys are cache, registry, links, completion.

• However, after this commit, satazor now uses config.storage.packages instead of config.storage.cache

• After that, in the v1.0.0 release, the config is always set to config.storage.packages, but the spec has not reflected this change ever since

Solution

• Export the environment variable bower_storage__packages

• Use a .bowerrc such as:

  {
    "storage":{
        "packages":"/path/to/cache"
    }
  }
  

P.S.: I think that linking the spec doc in Google Docs isn't a good idea, maybe github would be a more sensible choice (since we can issue pull requests).

Answer 2

What version of bower are you using? Bower 1.0.0 no longer uses ~/.bower. It follows the XDG spec, http://standards.freedesktop.org/basedir-spec/basedir-spec-latest.html

The "storage" property is only valid for 1.0.0.