grunt-newer-explicit v0.9.9
grunt-newer-explicit
Grunt Task for running tasks if source files are newer only.
This mimics the behaviour of good old Unix build tool make(1)
within
the Grunt build tool, i.e., destination files are only built if either
the destination file is still not existing at all or the corresponding
source files are newer. As a result, on subsequent build runs, this
allows you to rebuild just those artifacts which are really out-of-date.
It is also a little bit similar to (and even can be combined with) the
Grunt watch
task (from the grunt-contrib-watch
package). But instead
of continiously monitoring the filesystem for modifications, this task
only checks the modification time (mtime
) of the files once.
Notice that there is another Grunt plugin named
grunt-newer which provides a
similar functionality, but performs its operation implicitly and has to
store timestamps to know what has changed between runs. I prefer the
more explicit and database-less way as in the old Unix make(1)
, hence
I created this task grunt-newer-explicit
.
Getting Started
This plugin requires Grunt ~0.4.0
If you haven't used Grunt before, be sure to check out the Getting Started guide, as it explains how to create a Gruntfile as well as install and use Grunt plugins. Once you're familiar with that process, you may install this plugin with this command:
npm install grunt-newer-explicit --save-dev
Once the plugin has been installed, it may be enabled inside your Gruntfile with this line of JavaScript:
grunt.loadNpmTasks("grunt-newer-explicit");
Task Options
tasks
: (default[]
) the names of Grunt tasks to run if one of thesrc
files are newer than thedest
file (or thedest
file is still not existing).
Running the Task
Run this task with the grunt newer
command.
Task targets, files and options may be specified according to the Grunt Configuring tasks guide.
Usage Example
module.exports = function (grunt) {
grunt.loadNpmTasks("grunt-contrib-copy");
grunt.loadNpmTasks("grunt-newer-explicit");
grunt.loadNpmTasks("grunt-contrib-watch");
grunt.loadNpmTasks("grunt-contrib-clean");
grunt.initConfig({
copy: {
"foo": { src: "src/foo.txt", dest: "build/foo.txt" },
"bar": { src: "src/bar.txt", dest: "build/bar.txt" }
},
newer: {
"foo": {
src: [ "src/foo.txt" ],
dest: "build/foo.txt",
options: { tasks: [ "copy:foo" ] }
},
"bar": {
src: [ "src/bar.txt" ],
dest: "build/bar.txt",
options: { tasks: [ "copy:bar" ] }
}
},
watch: {
"all": {
files: [ "src/*.txt" ],
tasks: [ "newer" ]
}
},
clean: {
clean: [ "build" ],
distclean: [ "node_modules" ]
}
});
grunt.registerTask("default", [ "newer" ]);
};