Rails Assets

What do you like best?

The best part is not having to use Bower directly (or JS for that matter). Bower is great in theory, as it replicates Bundler (gemfile) and applies the same concept to JS libraries. RailsAssets is the next best thing. It takes over the small configuration steps of each individual js library and the footwork with coaxing Bower to work in the same way as your Gemfile. Saving time and the pain of dealing with individual JS libraries and your own internal asset-pipeline.

What do you dislike?

It's a bit like magic. It's been getting better over the last year, but since it buries most of the dirty work with Bower there's not much you can do in the way of customization. It either works well or it doesn't. It's also still difficult to manage dependencies between libraries requiring the same things.

On simple projects with only a few JS libraries it works perfectly, on more complex projects I find myself going back and using Bower directly despite it's own pitfalls.

Recommendations to others considering the product:

RailsAssets is a project to watch. It's gone from a great idea "in theory" to a drop in solution to Bower.

What problems are you solving with the product? What benefits have you realized?

The greatest benefit of RailsAssets is the time is saves setting up projects needing a few JS libraries. Big JS libraries usually have their own well maintain gems but RailsAssets lets you quickly add almost any library so you can quickly start using it to see if it's going to fit with your project.

Even if I end up using Bower directly (or the JS library) I usually start with RailsAssets. It really saves a lot of time when starting development. And hopefully as RailsAssets matures it will become a permanent solution in all projects.