Remove runtime asset building in favour of grunt

[jtojnar]

Grunt is already used for packaging so why not let it build assets too. Less complex app is better.

Suggestions are welcomed.

[gerundt]

Mhh, this would be a large barrier for normal user. :(

Modern web-developer should have no problem, but I think many users just have a FTP program and and a text editor.

[jtojnar]

That’s what the package (http://selfoss.aditu.de/selfoss-2.12.zip) is for. Unless they change the assets or use development version they should make do without grunt. user.css will be loaded separately.

Alternatively some build service could be set up (e.g. using travis).

[gerundt]

Sorry for the misunderstanding. So I think this could be a good change! 👍

[niol]

Grunt is (still) not available in apt (Debian/Ubuntu) and that's what I use, so it would make it a little bit harder for my particular case to contribute. But I'll manage. This was for a very minor comment.

What is missing from this pull request though is some documentation and error messages for people who want to run the development version:

• uploading to a PHP enabled dir will silently fail. Maybe selfoss should display an error message in this case, testing if CSS and JS have been built.
• the installation section of the doc should be updated in case one wants to run the development version
• the update section should be updated in any case because step 5 is wrong if grunt builds the files.

[jtojnar]

I will update the docs + add the error message later if this approach is alright with @SSilence.

When on Ubuntu I installed it through npm from Chris Lea’s PPA, not sure how compatible it is with Debian.

[alfredbuehler]

I prefer the current state, don't see any real advantage in changing this.

[SSilence]

Generally I would agree is the usage of grunt a good option. But in this case it would make the development of selfoss more difficult. Currently you can set DEBUG=1 in the config and the caching of js and css will be disabled. Debugging and programming new features is easier then with this extra step and extra toolchain (npm, grunt, ...). I use grunt currently only for generating the zip file. Other developers have not use grunt.

But thanks a lot for this pr!!