Develop Reference

Node modules local changes

I have a problem with web storm and github, I guess.
After I made some local changes in Local Changes appears some random files from node modules enter image description here. I didn't touch those files but it looks like I changed something.

It looks like you haven't added node_modules to your .gitignore file.
Add node_modules/ as a new line in that .gitignore file or create a new one. That way git will ignore any changes made in these files.

Add 'scripts' folder to .gitignore in Aurelia project?

I am noticing that Aurelia is building to the scripts directory in my CLI project. Is it safe to add this directory to .gitignore, or is there some reason to track changes to 'scripts' in Git?

You can safely add scripts to the .gitignore file.
Aurelia CLI uses the scripts folder to store the generated scripts (vendor-bundle.js and app-bundle.js).
vendor-bundle.js is for libraries (e.g. aurelia-binding, bluebird and jquery).
app-bundle.js is for all your HTML, CSS and JS files from the src folder combined in one JS file.
Because these files are renewed every time you run au run or au bundle, there is no need for them to be in version control.

Depending on what functions the scripts have, you might want to leave them in the repo.
E.g.: you add a new member to your team, and said scripts might be required for your project to work. In which case, if they're not in the repo, he will bother one of you to transfer them to his computer.
Edit: If the scripts are automatically generated every time you build the project, or if they are downloaded via a packet-manager, then there is no need to leave them in the repository.
If this is the case, it's a safe bet you can add the folder to the .gitignore. If this is not the case, then it might be better to leave them in the repository.
This all depends on your project, where you are putting your scripts and how the frameworks work.

How to Override Meteor Core Packages in a Project?

For a Meteor project I want to make changes to a Meteor Core library file.
Is this possible and if so, how?
So far I've tried just copying the files into my project directory hoping that the respective Objects are just overwritten from the originals but the problem herewith was that dependent functions or variables were only defined locally.
Then I tried to git clone them into the project's packages directory like you would do with a community package, but that didn't function either since the clone command failed (fatal: repository ... not found) and also the package is not explicitly called in the .meteor/packages file.
Any idea?

Meteor allows having local packages in a project, including ones that override existing (community or core) packages.
While overriding a community package locally often simply requires cloning (or extracting or adding as submodule) the GitHub repository into the /packages folder, core packages currently live inside sub-directories of the main meteor/meteor repository, which makes cloning them trickier.
Overriding a core package may require you to manually apply changes to the package as Meteor or the package update (as Meteor used to be dependent on specific package versions).
Therefore, before taking such step, make sure that you actually need to do it.
Make sure that you cannot you make your changes using local files or your own local package (e.g, by wrapping or replacing a function or monkey-patching it).
There are a few approaches that I used in order to override a core package.
Clone the entire repository and link the directories
This is useful if you want to contribute your changes to the project. You should probably fork the repository and clone your own fork.
Clone the meteor repository:
git clone https://github.com/meteor/meteor.git
or
git clone git#github.com:<username>/meteor.git if you forked it
Link the package directory (in your project's packages directory)
ln -s ../../(...)/meteor/packages/
You can checkout the desired branch/commit and copy them to the local packages directory instead, of course.
Statically download only the package directory
There is a neat trick that allows you to download a given directory from GitHub using svn.
This is obtained by issuing:
svn export https://github.com/meteor/meteor/[trunk|branches/]/packages/
for example:
cloning ddp-client from the devel branch:
svn export https://github.com/meteor/meteor/branches/devel/packages/ddp-client
or from the master branch:
svn export https://github.com/meteor/meteor/trunk/packages/ddp-client
Notes:
As mentioned earlier, you may need to manually apply changes if you update Meteor.
Don't forget to add the package to the project (meteor add <package>) if you haven't already.
Meteor is expected to switch to NPM at some point (possibly in Meteor v1.5), so make sure to use the methods specified in this answer only for meteor's own packaging system.

Create a Git bundle and share it remotely

I've created a bundle file of a private project of mine, and I would like to share it with someone. They ask me to provide the git bundle file generated.
Can I just email them the single bundle file? ...or do I need to attach the folder of the project itself as well?

Can I just email them the single bundle file?
Yep, that the point behind the bundle.
Its a full read-only repository.
Once you have the bundle you can share it.
git bundle will only package references that are shown by git show-ref: this includes heads, tags, and remote heads.
git bundle create ../reponame.bundle --all
--all- get all refs
This command creates bundle with all the source code and all other info like tags.
Even due that --all is not documented its much better to use it.
Note : --all would not include remote-tracking branches !!!

Do I need to keep a copy of js library in lib or vendor folder though already installed using npm?

Question 1 :
I am installing my project dependency libraries using npm and it gets stored in the npm_modules folder. Is it necessary to keep the copy of library like angular.js,angular-route.js in lib folder or vendor folder? I could see few people are using lib folder or vendor folders to store the library in the permanent manner. I am confused by seeing this.
Question 2:
Do I need to copy/paste the node_modules folder to production or just run the npm install command on the project folder's command prompt to install all the dependencies in production. How does a dependency library get promoted to production?
Thank you kindly for your advice.

It all depends on how you need to deploy your site to production, really. Ultimately, you will probably want to bundle all your JS files into one or a few files, which are minified and sent with gzip compression.
How you bundle them is up to you. There are quite a few options:
Browserify
Webpack
Grunt / gulp build process
And many more besides
As to whether you need to keep a copy of these bundled javascript files under version control, well I think that boils down to 1 key question: can you run a build process (such as one of the tools using NodeJS) on the production server, or on a build server that creates a zip file or installer? If so, then you don't need to include them, just get the build server or production server to check out the latest copy from version control, npm install and then run the build process.
But if the best you could do is have the production server check files out from source control, then you would want to include the final versions of the files to use in the repository.
Keeping generated files, such as your bundled javascript files, in your source control repo should be avoided where possible. Because otherwise, every commit has to contain the changes to the source files, and the corresponding change to the generated files as well. And the latter is just noise, and has to be ignored by every developer looking at a diff/patch for a commit.