grunt-m4

Grunt plugin for preprocess any files using m4 macro processor

Getting Started

This plugin requires Grunt ~0.4.2

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-m4 --save-dev

Once the plugin has been installed, it may be enabled inside your Gruntfile with this line of JavaScript:

grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-m4');

The "m4" task

Run this task with the grunt m4 command.

Task targets, files and options may be specified according to the grunt Configuring tasks guide.

Overview

In your project's Gruntfile, add a section named m4 to the data object passed into grunt.initConfig().

grunt.initConfig({
  m4: {
    options: {
      // Task-specific options go here.
    },
    your_target: {
      // Target-specific file lists and/or options go here.
    },
  },
});

Options

options.prefix_builtins

Type: Boolean Default value: true

Enable/disable --prefix-builtins option in m4. If option enabled then m4 internally modify all builtin macro names so they all start with the prefix m4_ For more information see m4 manual.

options.include

Type: String or Array Default value: 'include'

Make m4 search directory for included files that are not found in the current working directory.

If options.include is an array, then each item must be path to directory where an included files resides.

If options.include is a string, then it may contain one or more paths separated with ':' or ';' (depending on your host os).

options.define

Type: Object Default value: {}

Add names into the symbol table. All key/value pairs in options.define will be converted to a separate macro definitions. The key becomes a macro name and the corresponding value becomes a substitute result of this macro invocation.

Usage Examples

Basic usage

In this example, we just preprocess one file source.js.m4 into source.js

grunt.initConfig({
  m4: {
    files:
    {
       src: 'source.js.m4',
       dest: 'source.js'
    },
  },
});

Average usage

In this example, we preprocess all files source/*.js.m4 and rewrite them as source/*.js. When prepocessing then m4 will be search files for include in folders includes and more_includes. Also defines some macros DEBUG, PI and SOME_CONSTANT widely available in all sources.

grunt.initConfig({
  m4: {
    options: {
      include: ['includes','more_includes'],
      define: { DEBUG:'', PI:'Math.PI', SOME_CONSTANT:2 }
    },
    files:
    [{
       expand : true,
       cwd: "source/",
       src: "**/*.js.m4",
       dest: "source/",
       rename: function(dst, src) { return dst + src.replace(/(\.[^.\/]*)?$/, ""); },
    }],
  },
});

Requirements

• GNU m4

Release History

• 2013-12-16 v0.1.0 First release