Grunt is a JavaScript task-runner meant to automate simple build-time tasks, such as:

  • running NPM / Bower to grab dependencies
  • validate java / html files and report errors (jshint)
  • obfuscating and optimizing JavaScript and CSS (uglify / minify /concat)
  • copying files to an output directory (grunt-copy)
  • running test frameworks like Jasmine (Karma / Mocha / Jasmine)
  • report test code coverage (istanbul)
  • substitute injected dependencies and/or warn of broken injections (ngAnnotate / ngInject)
  • generate documentation? (jsdoc)
  • running SASS or LESS to generate CSS
  • custom build plugins to automate nearly anything!
  • ... and many more! See more plugins here!

It is available for download from NPM, which makes available even more tasks/plugins for Grunt.

Useful Tasks

More investigation needed.

See  NDS-173 - Getting issue details... STATUS

Alternatives

Gulp

Gulp has become more popular in the recent months and uses a different take on running JavaScript tasks (streams).

While I have not used it myself, it may be a suitable alternative to Grunt if it contains features that Grunt does not.

I will need to investigate the differences between Gulp and Grunt further.

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