For general installation instructions, please read the [[Getting Started]] guide. If you need more specific information after having read that, read the comprehensive [[Installing grunt]] guide.
Installing both published and unpublished development versions of Grunt is covered in the [[Installing grunt]] guide.
Grunt works fine on Windows, because Node.js and npm both work fine on Windows. Usually the problematic part is Cygwin, because it bundles an outdated version of Node.js.
The best way to avoid this issue is to use the msysGit installer to install the git binary and the Node.js installer to install the node and npm binaries, and to use the built-in Windows command prompt or PowerShell instead of Cygwin.
Chances are this is happening because you have forgotten to call the this.async method to tell Grunt that your task is asynchronous. For simplicity's sake, Grunt uses a synchronous coding style, which can be switched to asynchronous by calling this.async() within the task body.
Note that passing false to the done() function tells Grunt that the task has failed.
For example:
grunt.registerTask('asyncme', 'My asynchronous task.', function() {
var done = this.async();
doSomethingAsync(done);
});To enable bash tab auto-completion for grunt, add the following line to your ~/.bashrc file:
eval "$(grunt --completion=bash)"This assumes that Grunt has been installed globally with npm install -g grunt. Currently, the only supported shell is bash.
While each task can accept its own parameters, there are a few options available for sharing parameters across multiple tasks.
This is the preferred method for sharing parameters across multiple tasks.
Whereas alias tasks are necessarily simple, a regular task can use grunt.task.run to make it effectively function as a "dynamic" alias task. In this example, running grunt build:001 on the command line would result in the foo:001, bar:001 and baz:001 tasks being run.
grunt.registerTask('build', 'Run all my build tasks.', function(n) {
if (n == null) {
grunt.warn('Build num must be specified, like build:001.');
}
grunt.task.run('foo:' + n, 'bar:' + n, 'baz:' + n);
});Another way to share a parameter across multiple tasks would be to use grunt.option. In this example, running grunt deploy --target=staging on the command line would cause grunt.option('target') to return "staging".
grunt.registerTask('upload', 'Upload code to specified target.', function(n) {
var target = grunt.option('target');
// do something useful with target here
});
grunt.registerTask('deploy', ['validate', 'upload']);Note that boolean options can be specified using just a key without a value. For example, running grunt deploy --staging on the command line would cause grunt.option('staging') to return true.
In other cases, you may want to expose a way to set configuration or global values. In those cases, register a task that sets its arguments as a global or config value.
In this example, running grunt set_global:name:peter set_config:target:staging deploy on the command line would cause global.name to be "peter" and grunt.config('target') to return "staging". Presumably, the deploy task would use those values.
grunt.registerTask('set_global', 'Set a global variable.', function(name, val) {
global[name] = val;
});
grunt.registerTask('set_config', 'Set a config property.', function(name, val) {
grunt.config.set(name, val);
});If you're in the same directory as the Gruntfile, Windows tries to execute that file when you type grunt. So you need to type grunt.cmd instead.
An alternative would be to use the DOSKEY command to create a Grunt macro, following these directions. That would allow you to use grunt instead of grunt.cmd.
This is the DOSKEY command you'd use:
DOSKEY grunt=grunt.cmd $*