The file bower.json in this direcory is a bower file which lists the
external web assets used by the datatracker.
In order to update the version of a component listed in ietf/bower.json,
or add a new one, you should edit bower.json, and then run the management
command:
$ ietf/manage.py bower_install
That command will fetch the required version of each external component listed
in bower.json (actually, it will do this for all bower.json files
found in the static/ directories of all INSTALLED_APPS and the
directories in settings.STATICFILES_DIRS), saving them temporarily under
.tmp/bower_components/; it will then extract the relevant js and
css files and place them in an appropriately named directory under
static/lib/. The latter location is controlled by COMPONENT_ROOT in
settings.py.
(Not surprisingly, you need to have bower installed in order to use this management command.)
The bower_install command is not run automatically by bin/mkrelease,
since it needs an updated bower.json in order to do anything interesting;
and we're not running bower update since some package releases break
compatibility. So when you're intending to update an external web asset to a
newer version, you need to edit the bower.json file, run manage.py
bower_install, verify that the new version doesn't break things, and then
commit the new files under static\lib\ and the updated bower.json.