Grunt Source

Reuse a Grunt environment across multiple projects

Usage

• Install Grunt Source

  npm install -g grunt-source

• In your project's root, create a Gruntsource.json pointing to your Grunt source environment:

  {
      "source": "../grunt-source-foo"
  }

• A Grunt source environment is a directory with a normal Gruntfile.js with two slight modifications:

  • All calls to grunt.loadNpmTasks() removed.
  • A call to grunt.source.loadAllTasks(); is added to the top of the Gruntfile.js (See the example).

• Then simply run grunt-source

  grunt-source

  You can use grunt-source just as you would normally use grunt. Give grunt-source --help a try.

Example

For a simple example, please see:

grunt-source-example

Motivation

The Problem - Grunt environments can quickly become quite complicated and whenever we need to reuse a Grunt environment, it requires us to copy the current project and remove the source leaving just the Grunt related files.

A static solution - The Grunt team has made grunt-init which gives you a static copy of a predefined template. Although grunt-init does provide a way to template in new values for each copy, this is can still be improved.

A dynamic solution - Enter Grunt Source, instead of making numerous static copies of a given Grunt environment, you can actually use one Grunt environment for multiple projects. Also, having a directory separation between the Grunt environment and the actual source will help to reduce the complexity of your project. We can still have grunt-init like behaviour with grunt-source (e.g. initial placeholder source files) by using the in-built init task.

When using Grunt Source, projects will now contain only a Gruntsource.json, thereby abstracting the magic of Grunt outside of the project. This will help those who don't need to know the complexities of the build, yet still want to modify the source.

So with Grunt Source, we'll have one Grunt Source project which looks like:

├── Gruntfile.coffee
├── README.md
├── init
│   └── ...
├── node_modules
│   └── ...
└── package.json

And then multiple projects using this Grunt Source might look like:

├── Gruntsource.json
├── css
│   └── app.css
├── index.html
├── js
│   └── app.js
└── src
    ├── scripts
    ├── styles
    └── views

This directory structure is for grunt-source-web to build optimised static websites, ready to be hosted.

API

Grunt Source Configuration

In your Gruntsource.json file, the following properties are allowed:

• source - required - the directory where the source Grunt environment resides.
• repo - the Git repository which will be used to initialise and update the source.
  • url[@ref] where ref is a Git Reference (tag or commit hash)
• config - an object which will get merged when you call grunt.initConfig(), allowing you to override the source Gruntfile configuration.
• <prop> - any valid JSON value, in your Gruntfile.js will be accessible as grunt.source.<prop>.

Grunt Source Object

In your Gruntfile wrapper function, a source object is added to the grunt object.

grunt.source.loadAllTasks() (function)

This function is very important, first it loads all of the tasks (npm tasks and local tasks) in the "source" directory (or the Grunt project directory), then it changes the working directory back to the current directory and loads all local tasks there. So before the function is called, the current working directory is the source directory. Therefore, in the majority of cases, we'll want to call this function at the top of our Grunt Source Gruntfile.jss.

Essentially, the above description is the following:

//cwd is initially set the source directory!
 
//automatically `grunt.loadNpmTasks` all tasks inside the source directory's package.json's 'devDependencies' field
loadGruntTasks(grunt);
 
//load all user defined tasks inside the source directory
grunt.loadTasks("./tasks");
 
//set cwd to project directory (the directory you execute 'grunt-source' from)
process.chdir(PROJECT_DIR);
 
//load all user defined tasks inside the project directory
grunt.loadTasks("./tasks");

loadGruntTasks is provided by load-grunt-tasks

grunt.source.dir (string)

The absolute path to the source directory

grunt.source.<prop>

All properties defined in your configuration object will also be set on the grunt.source object

For example, the Gruntfile.coffee in grunt-source-web, places the grunt.source object in the Jade data option object, so in our index.jade file, we can do things like:

{
  "source": "~/.grunt-sources/web",
  "repo": "https://github.com/jpillora/grunt-source-web.git",
  "title": "Hello Grunt Source"
}

!!!5
html
  head
    title #{source.title}
  body
    h5 #{source.title}

In-built tasks

Before grunt is started, the following tasks are registered (grunt.registerTask). Therefore, all Grunt Sources will have the following tasks avaiable (just init for now).

init

Although we no longer need to copy and paste our Grunt environments across various projects. It can still be useful to generate an initial set of source files.

grunt-source init will copy all files from the source directory's init folder into the current working directory, however, it will only copy those files that are missing.

Also, upon clone of the repo property, this task will automatically be run.

Alternative Configuration

Instead of creating a Gruntsource.json, you can add a gruntSource field to your package.json file:

{
  "name": "my-module",
  "version": "0.1.3",
  "gruntSource": {
    "source": "~/.grunt-sources/node",
    "repo": "https://github.com/jpillora/grunt-source-node.git"
  }
}

CLI

The grunt-source runs in a similar way to grunt-cli, so commands like grunt-source task2:target4 task3:target1 will work as you expect.

Examples

See grunt-source-web for an example Grunt Source, and then see notifyjs-com for an example project using grunt-source-web. Or grunt-source-node.

MIT License

Copyright © 2013 Jaime Pillora <[e-mail]>

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the 'Software'), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED 'AS IS', WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.