Grunt Hub Automator

A Grunt Hub suitable to run as a daemon which helps executing tasks on multiple Grunt projects.

What can you use it for?

You can use a Grunt Hub Automator to automate the build of your projects (your projects' Gruntfile.js files should have watch tasks defined).

Prerequisites

The only prerequisite is to have npm and grunt installed. You should already have npm if you use grunt. If so, skip directly to the Getting Started section.

If you don't have npm, take a look at the npm's installation guide.

Also, if you don't have grunt, continue reading below.

Basically, all you need to do is to install node (which will install npm too), issue the following command to update npm to its latest version and install grunt:

$ npm install npm@latest -g
$ npm install -g grunt-cli

NOTE: if you are using OS X, you may need to prefix the commands with sudo, therefore:

$ sudo npm install npm@latest -g
$ sudo npm install -g grunt-cli

Getting Started

When you are done with the Prerequisites section, clone the repository on your local machine, enter it and launch the npm install command:

$ git clone https://github.com/tonix-tuft/grunt-hub-automator
$ cd grunt-hub-automator
$ npm install

Now you can set up your Grunt Hub Automator.

Set Up

The following steps must be done:

• Creating a new Gruntfile.js from the sample file provided with this repo (Gruntfile.sample.js);
• Creating a new "daemonizing" script from the sample file provided with this repo (grunt-hub-automator.sample);

Gruntfile.sample.js

Copy this file and save it as Gruntfile.js in the same directory. Open Gruntfile.js, and replace the src property with the paths to the Grunt files of your projects:

  ...
  grunt.initConfig({
    hub: {
      all: {
        src: ['/path/to/*/Gruntfile.js'] <--- Replace this path with the path to your Grunt file or with the paths to your Grunt files if you have many projects.
  ...

The idea is that every user who has cloned this repo has its own Grunt Hub Automator's Gruntfile.js file, which will act as a configuration for the Grunt Hub Automator. The Grunt Hub Automator will then run as a daemon and use this configuration to search for specific Gruntfile.js files to load.

grunt-hub-automator.sample

The last step is to set up the daemon which will run the Grunt Hub Automator. Copy the script grunt-hub-automator.sample and save it as grunt-hub-automator.

The default "daemonizing" tool used by Grunt Hub Automator is the daemon command, which you can be found both on Linux and on OS X. The file contains several variables needed to configure the command which you may edit if you need.

Otherwise, all you need to do is to install the daemon command and register the grunt-hub-automator script as a service.

Below the instructions depending on your platform.

NOTE: The sample script grunt-hub-automator.sample references the "daemonizing" command through this line:

...
DAEMONIZE_COMMAND=/usr/local/bin/daemon # The absolute path to your "daemonizing" command.
...

You must edit this path accordingly and specify the absolute path to the daemon command if you already have it installed or as soon as you install the daemon command for your plaform (below). To find out the absolute path of the daemon command, use the following command:

$ which daemon

Linux

Install the daemon command using your package manager, e.g. for Ubuntu:

$ sudo apt-get install daemon

Then assure that the following line within grunt-hub-automator points to the absolute path to your daemon command:

...
DAEMONIZE_COMMAND=/usr/local/bin/daemon # The absolute path to your "daemonizing" command.
...

After the daemon command is installed, to assure that the script is executed when your machine boots, edit the file /etc/rc.local with root privileges and add the following line before the last one (exit 0):

...
/Must/Be/An/Absolute/Path/To/Your/grunt-hub-automator/grunt-hub-automator || exit 1 # <--- The line to add
exit 0 # <--- Last line of /etc/rc.local

Note that the path to the grunt-hub-automator script must be absolute.

You can then reboot your machine and the daemon should start. To stop it programmatically use the provided command stop-linux:

$ cp ./stop-linux.sample ./stop-linux
$ chmod +x ./stop-linux
$ ./stop-linux

You can also copy the start-linux.sample script and save it as start-linux, but you must specify the path to the grunt-hub-automator script (it must be an absolute path).

Then you can use the start-linux script to start the Grunt Hub Automator programmatically:

$ ./start-linux

OS X

To install the daemon command, you can use brew:

$ brew install daemon

After the daemon command is installed, create a launch agent:

• Copy the sample com.grunt.hub.automator.plist.sample in the current folder and save it with the name com.grunt.hub.automator.plist;

• Open the new file and edit the following line so that it points to your grunt-hub-automator script (it must be an absolute path):

...
<string>/Must/Be/An/Absolute/Path/To/Your/grunt-hub-automator/grunt-hub-automator</string>
...

• Move the file to /Library/LaunchAgents/:

$ sudo mv ./com.grunt.hub.automator.plist /Library/LaunchAgents/

Load and start the new created agent so that it runs automatically when you boot your machine:

$ launchctl load -w /Library/LaunchAgents/com.grunt.hub.automator.plist

This command is the same as running the provided script start-os-x (which you can create by copying start-os-x.sampleand saving it as start-os-x, making it executable):

$ cp ./start-os-x.sample ./start-os-x
$ chmod +x ./start-os-x
$ ./start-os-x

If you ever need to stop the daemon programmatically, use the provided script named stop-os-x.sample to create a script named stop-os-x:

$ cp ./stop-os-x.sample ./stop-os-x
$ chmod +x ./stop-os-x
$ ./stop-os-x

After you run the daemon

After you launch the daemon on your system you can see a log file with a path name similar to /tmp/grunt-hub-automator.tmp.CY0h1P7b.log. Please keep in mind that this file will be recreated from scratch each time you restart the daemon. If this is not what you want, edit the grunt-hub-automator script.

Acknowledgements

shama/grunt-hub - grunt-hub

Authors

Tonix-Tuft

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License - see the LICENSE.md file for details.