ASP.NET 5: Bower, Grunt, Gulp, npm

Manage Client-Side Web Development in Visual Studio 2015, Using Grunt and Bower | The ASP.NET Site
"With Visual Studio 2015, you can:

• Easily manage client-side packages like jQuery, Bootstrap, or Angular.
• Automatically run build tasks such as LESS compilation, JavaScript minification, JSLint, or JavaScript unit tests.
• Take advantage of a rich ecosystem of tools created by the web development community.

To enable these scenarios, Visual Studio 2015 has built-in support for several popular third-party tools:

• Bower. Described as a “package manager for the web,” Bower lets you install and restore client-side packages, include JavaScript and CSS libraries. For server-side libraries like the MVC 6 framework, you will still use NuGet Package Manager.
• Grunt and Gulp. Grunt and Gulp are JavaScript-based task runners. If you aren’t familiar with these, a task runner is an app that automates routine development tasks. Right now, the ASP.NET 5.0 project template uses Grunt.
• npm (Node Package Manager). npm is a package manager that was originally created for Node.js. Bower, Grunt, and Gulp all use npm."

Introducing Gulp, Grunt, Bower, and npm support for Visual Studio - Scott Hanselman
"Web Development, specifically front end web development, is fast becoming as complex and sophisticated as traditional back end development. Most projects don't just upload some JS and CSS files via FTP. There's now a front end build process that can include expansion of SASS and LESS, minification of CSS/JS, running JSHint or JSLint, and much more. These build tasks and processes are coordinated with tools like Gulp and Grunt. Additionally, client-side libraries are managed as packages using management systems like npm and bower"