grunt-hub

A Grunt task to watch and run tasks on multiple Grunt projects.

Create a Grunt Hub

A Grunt Hub is just a folder with a Gruntfile and this grunt plugin installed. To create one do:

mkdir grunt-hub && cd grunt-hub
npm install grunt-hub
cp -R node_modules/grunt-hub/tasks/init/hub/* .

Then edit the Gruntfile file to point to your other Grunt projects and run: grunt or grunt watch.

Integrate With an Existing Grunt Project

Install this grunt plugin next to your project's Gruntfile with: npm install grunt-hub

Then add this line to your project's Gruntfile:

grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-hub');

Watching Forever

The common use for grunt-hub is for a development server. Where you would like to watch multiple projects and compile the SASS or concat/minify JS upon every project as you edit.

Depending on your system, there are various ways to ensure the grunt-hub stays alive. Such as with upstart and monit.

A simple way is to use nohup and create a start.sh script:

#!/bin/sh
DIR=`dirname $0`
/usr/bin/nohup /usr/local/bin/grunt --base $DIR watch --no-color &
echo "Grunt Hub Started"

and a stop.sh script:

#!/bin/sh
ps -ef | sed -n '/grunt/{/grep/!p;}' | awk '{print$2}' | xargs -i kill {}
echo "Grunt Hub Stopped"

Put these in your grunt-hub folder and run ./start.sh to start and ./stop.sh to stop.

Configuring

This plugin includes a hub task and overrides the watch task.

hub task

The hub task is for running tasks on multiple projects. It would like to know which Gruntfiles to use and which tasks to run on each Grunt project. For example if I would like to lint and test on every Grunt project one folder up:

grunt.initConfig({
  hub: {
    all: {
      src: ['../*/Gruntfile.js'],
      tasks: ['jshint', 'nodeunit']
    }
  }
});

If tasks were omitted, it will run the default tasks.

watch task

The watch task is for watching multiple Grunt projects and triggering tasks on the respective Grunt project as files are edited. This watch task will read each project's Gruntfile. If you specify tasks it will run only those tasks otherwise if no tasks are specified it will run all and each of the project's watch targets.

To specify which Gruntfiles this watch task should read use:

grunt.initConfig({
  watch: {
    all: {
      files: ['../*/Gruntfile.js'],
      tasks: ['jshint', 'nodeunit']
    }
  }
});

or if you're using the above hub config and would like to run all the watch targets of the projects, use:

grunt.initConfig({
  watch: {
    files: '<%= hub.all.src %>'
  }
});

Contributing

Please open an issue or send a pull request. Thanks!

Release History

• 0.4.0 Support for Grunt v0.4.
• 0.3.6 Propagate exit codes. Thanks @wachunga!
• 0.3.5 Update for latest grunt. Thanks @akinofftz!
• 0.3.4 Allow watch task to be renamed.
• 0.3.3 Fix issue with grunt-hub passing it's own tasks. Minor refactoring.
• 0.3.2 Fix dep to grunt-lib-contrib. Include options in verbose output. Better spawn grunt in hub task.
• 0.3.1 Update to gaze@0.2.0. Only spawn one at a time. Add interrupt option. Allow tasks to be undefined. Update to run on Grunt v0.4.
• 0.3.0 Use gaze for watching, Grunt v0.4 compatibility
• 0.2.0 refactor: make easier to upgrade to Grunt v0.4, windows support, fix issue with mutliple watch targets
• 0.1.1 add copyable template for a grunt hub
• 0.1.0 initial release

License

Copyright (c) 2012 Kyle Robinson Young Licensed under the MIT license.