load-grunt-parent-tasks

Loads de-duped grunt tasks from parent or sibling modules.

TL;DR

load-grunt-parent-tasks is a Grunt library that allows you to load all of your Grunt tasks even if they are in a parent folder. This library was heavily inspired by this StackOverflow post: "Centralise Node Modules In Project With Subproject", and and utilizes the gruntcollection feature of grunt.loadNpmTasks.

Description

If Grunt task is loaded as a submodule then create a grunt-collection module in your local node_modules folder to trick grunt into loading dependencies from a parent folder. This might be necessary if project A contains a Gruntfile.js with dependencies X, Y, and Z, and is loaded as a npm dependency of project B which contains dependencies A, X and Y. In that scenario Npm will de-dupe project A's Npm dependencies when executing npm install in project B and will look like this:

B
├── node_modules
│   ├── A
│   │   ├── Gruntfile.js
│   │   ├── node_modules
│   │   │   └── Z
│   │   └── package.json (has depencencies X,Y,Z)
│   ├── X
│   └── Y
└── package.json (has dependencies A,X,Y)

If project A's package.json contains an install or postinstall script that executes it's Gruntfile.js the Grunt task will throw 2 errors:

Local Npm module "X" not found. Is it installed?
Local Npm module "Y" not found. Is it installed?

Project A's Grunt task will not be able to load the de-duped dependencies because they reside in the parents node_modules folder. This can be fixed by dropping in a new module which contains project A's package.json with the addition of a keywords property that contains "gruntcollection" in it's array.

B
├── node_modules
│   ├── A
│   │   ├── Gruntfile.js
│   │   ├── node_modules
│   │   │   ├── grunt-collection
│   │   │   │   └── package.json (has dependencies X,Y,Z and 'keywords: ["gruntcollection"]')
│   │   │   └── Z
│   │   └── package.json (has depencencies X,Y,Z)
│   ├── X
│   └── Y
└── package.json (has dependencies A,X,Y)

Then at the beginning of your Gruntfile.js you call grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-collection'). Now Grunt will search up for the current directory to find the modules to load.

Features

• Checks if the main Grunt task is a submodule of another project.
• Creates a grunt-collection module in your local node_modules folder.
• Creates a grunt-collection/package.json that is a mirror of your projects package.json file defined by options.config.
• Filters out npm modules to load using globbing patterns defined in options.pattern.
• Filters out which dependencies key to load from defined by options.scope.

Installation

npm install --save load-grunt-parent-tasks

Example

Basic Gruntfile.js

module.exports = function(grunt) {
 
  require('load-grunt-parent-tasks')(grunt);
 
};

Creates the following:

A
├── Gruntfile.js
├── node_modules
│   └── grunt-collection
│       └── package.json
└── package.json

Gruntfile.js with options

module.exports = function(grunt) {
 
  require('load-grunt-parent-tasks')(grunt, {
    config: 'package.json',
    pattern: 'grunt-*',
    scope: 'dependencies',
    module: 'abc-def'
  });
 
};
 
// Can also be written as:
module.exports = function(grunt) {
 
  require('load-grunt-parent-tasks')(grunt, {
    config: require('package.json'),
    pattern: ['grunt-*'],
    scope: ['dependencies'],
    module: 'abc-def'
  });
 
};

Creates the following:

A
├── Gruntfile.js
├── node_modules
│   └── abc-def
│       └── package.json
└── package.json

Options

config

Type: String, Object
Default: Path to nearest package.json

pattern

Type: String, Array
Default: 'grunt-*' (globbing pattern)

scope

Type: String, Array
Default: ['dependencies', 'optionalDependencies']

module

Type: String
Default: 'grunt-collection'

The module option can be changed in case grunt-collection ever conflicts with any other package name.

Contributing

In lieu of a formal styleguide, take care to maintain the existing coding style. Add unit tests for any new or changed functionality. Lint and test your code using Grunt.

License

MIT © Larry Gordon