Bower and devDependencies vs dependencies

devDependencies are for the development-related scripts, e.g. unit testing, packaging scripts, documentation generation, etc.

dependencies are required for production use, and assumed required for dev as well.

Including devDependencies within dependencies, as you have it, won't be harmful; the module will just bundle more files (bytes) during the install - consuming more (unnecessary) resources. From a purist POV, these extra bytes could be detrimental, just depends on your perspective.

To shed some light, looking at bower help install, modules listed under devDependencies can be omitted during the module installation via -p or --production, e.g.:

bower install angular-latest --production

This is the recommended way to perform an installation for anything other than a development platform.

On the contrary, there is no way to omit modules listed under dependencies.

As of [email protected] (see bower latest source), bower help yields:

Usage:

    bower <command> [<args>] [<options>]

Commands:

    cache                   Manage bower cache
    help                    Display help information about Bower
    home                    Opens a package homepage into your favorite browser
    info                    Info of a particular package
    init                    Interactively create a bower.json file
    install                 Install a package locally
    link                    Symlink a package folder
    list                    List local packages
    lookup                  Look up a package URL by name
    prune                   Removes local extraneous packages
    register                Register a package
    search                  Search for a package by name
    update                  Update a local package
    uninstall               Remove a local package

Options:

    -f, --force             Makes various commands more forceful
    -j, --json              Output consumable JSON
    -l, --log-level         What level of logs to report
    -o, --offline           Do not hit the network
    -q, --quiet             Only output important information
    -s, --silent            Do not output anything, besides errors
    -V, --verbose           Makes output more verbose
    --allow-root            Allows running commands as root

See 'bower help <command>' for more information on a specific command.

and further, bower help install yields (see latest source):

Usage:

    bower install [<options>]
    bower install <endpoint> [<endpoint> ..] [<options>]

Options:

    -F, --force-latest      Force latest version on conflict
    -h, --help              Show this help message
    -p, --production        Do not install project devDependencies
    -S, --save              Save installed packages into the project's bower.json dependencies
    -D, --save-dev          Save installed packages into the project's bower.json devDependencies

    Additionally all global options listed in 'bower help' are available

Description:

    Installs the project dependencies or a specific set of endpoints.
    Endpoints can have multiple forms:
    - <source>
    - <source>#<target>
    - <name>=<source>#<target>

    Where:
    - <source> is a package URL, physical location or registry name
    - <target> is a valid range, commit, branch, etc.
    - <name> is the name it should have locally.