Npm postinstall only on development
Newer npm (& Yarn) versions include support for the prepare script that is run after each install run but only in development mode. Also, the prepublish is deprecated. This should be enough:
{ scripts: { "prepare": "bower install" }}
I think you cannot choose what scripts are run based on the --production argument. What you can do, however, is supply a script which tests the NODE_ENV variable and only runs bower install if it's not "production".
If you are always in a unix-y environment, you can do it like this:
{ scripts: { "prepublish": "[ \"$NODE_ENV\" = production ] && exit 0; bower install" }}
This only works if you're on a unix-like environment:
NPM sets an environment variable to "true" when install is run with --production. To only run the postinstall script if npm install was not run with --production, use the following code.
"postinstall": "if [ -z \"$npm_config_production\" ]; then node_modules/gulp/bin/gulp.js first-run; fi",