For some reason there is a whole thread on this seemingly simple tasks. In a bootstrapped Laravel 5.4 instance the following worked for me.
npm install font-awesome
// resources/assets/sass/app.scss
// Font Awesome
@import "node_modules/font-awesome/scss/font-awesome";
Add the following to your elixir config in the gulpfile.
.copy('node_modules/font-awesome/fonts', 'public/fonts')
If you run gulp
you should be able to now start using font-awesome everywhere in your app.
i meant npm run watch to show any change on scss or js files, but i was having the problem of the squares, i figure that i got it deployed on the server as an alias (www.host.com/laravel_proyect), there was when i have de problem, but when i deploy it as the main proyect (www.laravel.com), fontawesome run exelente, the problem was the routes, laravel expectates (ass i can understand) www.laravel.com/view to be in web.php, and so any asset that we use, whe using www.host.com/laravel/view, the routes must change in any view and so in the asset.