To echo other comments in this thread -- if you're a beginner just looking to get started with a Backbone app, this may not be the best "skeleton". If you look at the GitHub repo:
... you'll find a somewhat odd scaffold that doesn't give you much more than a raw Sinatra app with Backbone included on a page -- but will probably feel far more confusing, with the inclusion of arbitrary bits of code:
If you look at this as an interesting example of an extraction from an existing app -- that's great; more power to you. But I'd be wary of using it as a "skeleton" to start building your own thing.
I agree that this not an optimal start point for someone who just heard of Backbone.js.
I do think, though, that if someone will still be a bit confused how to stitch things together after reading and poking around for a while, this sort of skeleton could provide just enough insight.
I released this as something that seemed useful to me and in that context should be useful to at least someone else.
If you're unfamiliar with the Ruby world, the usefulness somewhat disappears, but that's said in the prerequisites.
If we're talking about a complete app, then it depends on what you're planning to use on the server side. Take whatever that is, and include Backbone (and appropriate dependencies) in your HTML. You're off to the races.
Saying what the best "skeleton" is would be like saying that there's a particular skeleton app you should always use when starting a project that involves jQuery.
https://github.com/mihar/backbone-skeleton/
... you'll find a somewhat odd scaffold that doesn't give you much more than a raw Sinatra app with Backbone included on a page -- but will probably feel far more confusing, with the inclusion of arbitrary bits of code:
https://github.com/mihar/backbone-skeleton/blob/master/src/c...
If you look at this as an interesting example of an extraction from an existing app -- that's great; more power to you. But I'd be wary of using it as a "skeleton" to start building your own thing.
That said, if other folks want to share their basic setup or source code, like @dangrossman did, that would be lovely. I'll start: https://github.com/documentcloud/documentcloud/tree/master/p...