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I lol'd at the title. Just having a Gruntfile is the first smell I notice when looking at a project. Seriously, why take two simple tools and layer a unneces

I lol'd at the title. Just having a Gruntfile is the first smell I notice when looking at a project. Seriously, why take two simple tools and layer a unnecessary "task runner" on top of them?

dugmartin 13y ago
It makes sense when you use it with grunt-contrib-watch. Then you just keep it running as you are developing and listen for the error "ding" after a save.
- jaredhanson 13y ago
  Actually, no. It's very easy to run a watcher which executes any command (like say jshint itself).
possibilistic 13y ago
What does your build process look like? What's the tooling, and how do you invoke it? Just curious about alternatives.
- jayferd 13y ago
  I use make.
  - brandonbloom 13y ago
    I generally prefer Make as well and I even made the case for Make when Grunt.js was first announced [1]. That said, I did use Grunt on a recent project and it worked out reasonably well. For myself, I'd prefer to keep using Make, but for many teams, Grunt is a reasonable choice. I chose Grunt because Make generally requires a lot more background knowledge and ongoing discipline. Most Grunt tasks are configured by relatively constrained JSON data, so it's pretty hard for non-experts to muck it up unless they need to write a custom task. A Makefile would have created much greater education burden for me. That's particularly a concern when the team's Make/shell expert has time-limited involvement with the project. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3777393 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3777393
    - jt009 13y ago
      Don't give us that BS. Make is braindead simple to use. There's no such thing as a Make/shell expert.
- jaredhanson 13y ago
  I use make. You can see my typical setup for Node packages on GitHub, for example: https://github.com/jaredhanson/locomotive https://github.com/jaredhanson/locomotive
chadly 13y ago
I find having a "standard" way to run tasks enormously beneficial especially when working with developers cross-platform. Whatever OS you are running, just grunt and all is well. :)

I lol'd at the title. Just having a Gruntfile is the first smell I notice when looking at a project. Seriously, why take two simple tools and layer a unnecessary "task runner" on top of them?

dugmartin 13y ago

It makes sense when you use it with grunt-contrib-watch. Then you just keep it running as you are developing and listen for the error "ding" after a save.

jaredhanson 13y ago
Actually, no. It's very easy to run a watcher which executes any command (like say jshint itself).

possibilistic 13y ago

What does your build process look like? What's the tooling, and how do you invoke it? Just curious about alternatives.

jayferd 13y ago
I use make.
- brandonbloom 13y ago
  I generally prefer Make as well and I even made the case for Make when Grunt.js was first announced [1]. That said, I did use Grunt on a recent project and it worked out reasonably well. For myself, I'd prefer to keep using Make, but for many teams, Grunt is a reasonable choice. I chose Grunt because Make generally requires a lot more background knowledge and ongoing discipline. Most Grunt tasks are configured by relatively constrained JSON data, so it's pretty hard for non-experts to muck it up unless they need to write a custom task. A Makefile would have created much greater education burden for me. That's particularly a concern when the team's Make/shell expert has time-limited involvement with the project. [1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3777393 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3777393
  - jt009 13y ago
    Don't give us that BS. Make is braindead simple to use. There's no such thing as a Make/shell expert.
jaredhanson 13y ago
I use make. You can see my typical setup for Node packages on GitHub, for example: https://github.com/jaredhanson/locomotive https://github.com/jaredhanson/locomotive

chadly 13y ago

I find having a "standard" way to run tasks enormously beneficial especially when working with developers cross-platform. Whatever OS you are running, just grunt and all is well. :)