Grunt is everywhere. JavaScript projects from jQuery to Twitter
Bootstrap use Grunt to convert code, run tests, and produce
distributions for production. It's a build tool in the spirit of Make
and Rake, but written with modern apps in mind. This book gets you up to
speed with Grunt using practical hands-on examples, so you can wrangle
your projects with ease. You'll learn how to create and maintain tasks
and project builds, and automate your workflow with plugins and custom
tasks.
JavaScript has moved from being the language you love to hate to the
language you need to use. And as JavaScript applications get more
complex, you need a process to manage that complexity. While online
tutorials just explain how to slap together a configuration file, this
book goes further and shows you how to create your own tasks, design
your own project templates, combine plugins together to bring a web app
to life, and build your own plugins.
You'll start by learning the basics of task creation, error handling,
and logging as you create a simple configuration that executes basic
JavaScript code using Node.js. Then you'll jump right into file
manipulation as you read, write, copy, and delete files. You'll learn
how Grunt's powerful multitasks work as you build a task to concatenate
files together. Once you've got a grasp on these basics, you'll build a
simple app with AngularJS and CoffeeScript, using Grunt to do all the
heavy lifting and script processing. Finally, you'll create your own
plugin so you can understand how plugins work.
Each chapter contains hands-on exercises and ideas for further study.
Whether you rock Ruby or sling C#, Grunt will be a useful addition to
your toolbox.
What You Need:
This book covers Grunt 0.4.1 and higher, and requires basic knowledge of
JavaScript and command-line tools on Windows, OS X, or Linux.
