Why so many repos about styles?

[GregTurner]

I'm the author of yet another style repo, here.

I had to take a different direction than this repo, but I would like to unite our efforts. Could we incorporate the good from both or should we consciously allow both?

The good, and the reason for divergence, about this repo is mygovbc-bootstrap-theme:

1. Integrated with npm/yarn for easy dependency management
2. Uses 99% bootstrap, no custom classes to learn
3. Has demo page to view all styles
4. Comes pre-concatenated, uglified

Thoughts from the community please!

[loneil]

I agree that a unified stylesheet could could be an asset in a lot of projects.
I've used (an early version of) the theme Greg is referencing above on an application at BC Registries and it was nice to just be using the vanilla bootstrap classes and have them styled appropriately without having to declare new classes or do overrides.
If changes need to be made to certain UI components then we could just tweak the LESS variable file(s) easily. We were processing the LESS files as part of our build, but if no larger changes are required then being able to just import the styles as a dependency is useful as well.

[foley-lynn]

Great to see these repo's popping up. Considering all the different stacks and build processes being used, I wonder if it might be better to have a library of reusable snippets to be used when customizing/overriding bootstrap? Or I suppose both could be useful side-by-side depending on the use case for the developer.

[GregTurner]

@foley-lynn definitely we've found ourselves with a good problem because in the past we had nothing! Snippets if definitely another options is that what you'd prefer as a developer or justing throwing the idea out there?

[foley-lynn]

Mainly thinking aloud at this point. It ultimately comes down to what the majority of developers thinks will be the most useful. I don't have a new build in the pipeline at this point, but if we got behind one project, I'd be happy to contribute.

[juhewitt]

Allo! Well, I'm with @foley-lynn's main point as well for the majority of developers. It comes down to developer preference. At the end of the day, I would imagine a bootstrap theme that could be included through bower/automated package manager and/or just downloaded and installed independent of the development environment, that would be the best... (IMO and experience working throughout all of the ministries).

I've only spent my recent time in WordPress Vagrant development (SAGE automated theme etc), so bower this and that.. but I'll say a quick bower git clone call would be nice... :P

I am concerned from a governance perspective, that we are going to end up with a bunch of styles that may or may not follow the Province's branding guidelines which for the time being yours truly has to keep a watchful eye on. That's really only my one fright.

[GregTurner]

From @juhewitt and @foley-lynn input we can say we want package manager integration as well as a manual download for various developer use-cases.

What about the pure bootstrap theme vs custom classing, what do developers prefer?

[juhewitt]

And this is where I'm dated... Yarn. LOL. Go ahead. Make fun.

I'm looking to the community to answer your question @GregTurner. I would say pure Bootstrap theme in my experience....

[GregTurner]

I agree @juhewitt let's bring in some past consumers/contributors: @ateucher @Gavin-McLeod @rturgano @mark-a-wilson

[mark-a-wilson]

Hi all, don't feel like I can be much help here ... I've only been a consumer, and the stuff about dependencies and updates is over my head!

But in my mind, it would be great if, as much as possible, everyone used and built upon one central repo so that we don't wind up with duplicate styles slightly different in many places. If new developers could use what exists as much as possible, then when something new is needed, submit new styles as a pull request and let @juhewitt provide direction to keep gov.bc.ca and new apps as consistent as possible?

For beginners like me, the closer to pure Bootstrap the better.

[Gavin-McLeod]

At TRAN we are looking for a couple of things and I'm probably not thinking of everything now:

• We need to be able to match a single government standard.
• We need to be able to react quickly and hopefully costlessly to changes in those standards (because change they surely will).
• We need the ability to test before use. Nothing would ever deploy directly into a PROD environment. This implies that we would probably generate our own distribution package for in-house use anyway.
• We need simplicity in deployment/distribution as any number of developers (contracted and otherwise) with varying backgrounds and experience will need to use whatever "it" is.

From the use of earlier versions of the Gov2 templates, the comments from developers have been that they ultimately needed to override so much of the CSS that they thought they would have been better off to just roll their own CSS/JS. I haven't been able to get details on that yet to know how that came about, but this defeats the point of a single distribution.

The notion that there are multiple style repos in play already seems like that may also be a result of what our devs ran into. In any case, if these are going to accumulate, then there might need to be a strategy around this. Ad hoc variations of standards make it very difficult for the rest of us to encourage adherance to any standard. It also makes contract language really really difficult.

[juhewitt]

Sounds like an opportunity to start again... or from a single repo and move forwards... I vote this one. :)

[GregTurner]

@juhewitt what I'm hearing developers want is:

1. Bootstrap v4 using SASS
2. Try to keep it pure bootstrap
3. Support npm, bower and manual downloads
4. Provide a demo page to preview styles
5. Provide good release management to avoid breakages

Anything else?

[foley-lynn]

If we're going with bootstrap 4, which iirc is in alpha status, we'll need to ensure that however its setup, we can easily capture updates to the core project without nuking our customizations.

[Gavin-McLeod]

As an aside, this is a nearly identical convo to what we were having in 2013 that led to the creation of the IAC.