Common task runners

Date 30/09/2014

Developers often need to do repetitive manual work which could be automated.

Grunt will be used as the primary example since it is the oldest, most mature and with largest community.

Tasks can be created for command line tools as well as programmable APIs. Both of these approaches will be looked at, via existing implementations, namely grunt-eslint and grunt-webp.

Tasks for the day

1. Create a pull request at GitHub to someone else's repository, for example a classmate

   • Add a task runner

   • Configure the existing linting configuration to be run via task runner

   • In case there is no linting, add it in a separate configuration file

   • Link the pull request below.

2. Compare how achieve the same with another task runner or a build tool (one of Grunt, gulp and Broccoli)

   • Create a single file in your hello-node-js repository and name it [task runner name]-comparison.js

   • The file should be able to complete the same task as the one in the pull request

   • If any additional configuration is needed, add an example of that in the file header comment section.

3. Optional: find a useful tool, which does not have one of the presented task runner versions available and create such

   • It can also be a command line tool, not necessarily made with Node.js

   • It can even be a web service which has a RESTful API for processing files

Pull requests related to the first task

• Task 1-2, Oona

• TomTerin pull request lalallala

• Task 1, Maxim D

• @olemstrom

• HeikkiAlanen

• Sopheak Kong

• Jukka Rautanen

• Onnia

• merilainen-metropolia

• Markus Iivonen

Links related to the lecture subject

• Broccoli

• Grunt

• gulp.js