Adding a core package

To add the less package, we can simply open the terminal, go to our projects folder, and enter the following command:

$ meteor add less

Now, we are able to use any *.less files in our project, and Meteor will automatically compile them in its build process for us.

Adding a third-party package

To add a third-party package, we can simply search for packages on either https://atmospherejs.com, which is the frontend for Meteors packaging system, or use the command-line tool, $ meteor search <package name>.

For our blog, we will need the jeeeyul:moment-with-langs package that allows us later to simply manipulate and format dates.

Packages are namespaced with the authors name followed by a colon.

To add the moment package, we simply enter the following command:

$ meteor add jeeeyul:moment-with-langs

After the process is done, and we restarted our app using $ meteor, we will have the moment object available in our app global namespace and we can make use of it in the upcoming chapters.

Should we ever want to add only specific version of a package, we can use the following command:

$ meteor add jeeeyul:moment-with-langs@=2.8.2

If you want a version in the 1.0.0 (but not the 2.0.0) range use the following command:

$ meteor add jeeeyul:moment-with-langs@1.0.0

To update only packages we can simply run the following command:

$ meteor update –-packages-only

Additionally, we can update only a specific package using the following command:

$ meteor update jeeeyul:moment-with-langs

That's it! Now we are fully ready to start creating our first templates. You can jump right into the next chapter, but make sure you come back to read on, as we will now talk about Meteor's build process in more detail.