Roots is a toolkit built on best practices for advanced front-end web development. It has a very large number of features, which I’ll attempt to list below. Roots comes in the form of a static site build tool by default, but also includes templates and plugins for express and rails.
extremely simple installation
clean and minimal default project template
clean and intuitive app settings file
jade, stylus, and coffeescript default stack
easy to add languages with a simple and well-documented plugin interface
super fast live reload implementation
compile errors displayed as a flash message, doesn’t break workflow
layouts and partials fully supported
coffeescript and markdown can be written directly in views
global variables and functions (view helpers)
extremely robust, modular, and powerful css helper library built in
single command deploy to heroku, nodejitsu, or github pages
intelligently minifies html, css, and js on deploy
efficient client-side js management through bower and require.js
automatically precompiles jade templates for use in client-side MVCs like backbone
use dynamic content to create collections, blogs, etc