There is an alternative approach to install Bootstrap via npm and then by running the npm install command. This alternative involves downloading the latest Bootstrap release from the official GitHub repository. Contrary to the npm installation approach, this installation contains many additional files and folders, for example, the nuget folder. This means that you have downloaded all the available tools for all the platforms supported by Bootstrap. Depending on what you are trying to accomplish, installing via Git might be your preferred approach, as it gives you more options out of the box.

The process starts similarly to the previous recipe. You begin by clicking on Create a new workspace at the Cloud9 IDE dashboard.

1. Fill out the Workspace name and Description.

2. In the Clone from Git or Mercurial URL input field, enter the address of the official Bootstrap repo on GitHub at https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap:
   

3. Click on Create workspace. After clicking on Create workspace, a new container will be spun up. Once the environment is ready, you'll be greeted with the tree structure of Bootstrap 3.3.7, cloned from GitHub.

4. Run git fetch:

      git fetch

5. Checkout the v4-dev branch:

      git checkout v4-dev

Running the preceding command will result in the following notifications in Bash:

         Branch v4-dev set up to track remote branch v4-dev from
         origin. Switched to a new branch 'v4-dev'

In other words, you have now switched to a branch that has the latest installation of Bootstrap 4.

6. Install grunt-cli:

      npm install -g grunt-cli

7. Run the package.json file:

      npm install

Running the preceding command will install PhantomJS, as well as a number of dependencies. At this point, we have the dist folder available with all the compiled .css and .js files. However, to be able to work with Bootstrap docs, we still need to install Bundler and Jekyll, which is explained in the next recipe.