brainpm

a package manager for the brain (very experimental)

Background

Read about the idea in this blog post

brainpm is based on npm. Like npm it uses package.json. Like browserify it extends package.json with an additional field. brain. brain is an object that lets you specify what knowledge is required to understand the learning material and what knowledge the learning material provides.

    "name":"flex-boxes",
    ...
    "brain": {
        "requires": ["html", "css"],
        "provides": ["css:flex-box"]
    }
    ...

Episodes

Episodes are short texts explaining a certain concept or technique. Typically they embed or link to some other ressources on the web. The main purpose of an episode is to add meta data to the linked/embedded learning resource. Some episodes may also include an interactive quiz or interactive illustrations.

Each episode lives in its own repository on github. See http://github.com/shecodes-content for examples.

bpm bundle generates a JavaScript file containing the episode's text (a markdown file) as well as the entire package.json file. The generated bundle can be put on a static file server, like the github-pages service, and can be loaded cross-origin via a <script> tag (JSONP-style).

Repositories

bpm create-remote is a fast way to create a repository on github and set it as the origin remote of a pre-existing local repository.

bpm publish can then be used to push the generated bundle to the gh-pages branch of that repository, thus making it available on the web.

Organisations

Repositories containing episodes need to be part of an organisation on github. The organisation provides the container and the context for episodes. bpm create-remote automatically creates a repository that belongs to the organisation that was specified in .bpmrc.

The organisation should contain episode repositories only.

Typical workflow

mkdir my-episode  # use snail-case
cd my-episode
git init
bpm init          # answer all the questions and git a package.json file
vim readme.md     # write your episode's text
git add package.json readme.md
git commit -am'initial commit'
git push
bpm create-remote
bpm publish       # bundle & publish to github pages

Later, when you need to make changes

vim readme.md     # fix your typos
git ci -am'fixed typos'
npm version patch # bump the version number
git push --tags
bpm publish       # re-publish to gh-pages

Installation

npm install brainpm  --global

Configuration

Configuration is read from a .bpmrc file located in your home directory, or in several other places, see http://npmjs.org/rc

It should have the following entries

github_user=YOUR_GUTHUB_USERNAME
github_organisation=YOUR_GITHUB_ORGANISATION

Usage

bpm init

Use bpm init instead of npm init to get the extra fields in yout package.json.

bpm init

bpm bundle

The bundle sub command takes your package.json and a markdown file (defaults to readme.md) and bundles them up as a JSONP comparible javascript file.

bpm bundle

bpm publish

bpm publish takes a previously created bundle and pushes it to the gh-pages branch of the git remote called origin. If the origin points to github, this means the bundle becomes available on the web.

bpm publish

bpm toc

bpm toc shows all episodes in the organisation, their names, version numbers and what knowledge they provide and require. It shows warnings (exclamation point in the first column) for episodes that require knowledge that is not provided by any episode.

bpm toc

bpm rebundle-all

clones, bundles and publishes all episodes found in the organisation. Useful when the bundler itself is updated.

bpm rebundle-all

bpm list-repositories

shows a list of all repositories in the organsiation.

bpm list-repositories

bpm info

shows information about a specific episode

bpm info intro