Thanks to my new manager, Chris Iona, we have put aside time to experiment with a new tech stack at hipagesGroup! All that time in the past few years spent on concatenating, obfuscating, minifying and versioning files along with slow and manual deployment processes… gee, I wish I have been introduced to Grrrrunt earlier! It may have taken some time for me to get on the band wagon, but it’s better to be late than never!
So what is Grunt?
Grunt is a Javascript Task Runner which helps you automate repetitive tasks and simplify chores. To experiment with Grunt, you will first need to get familiar with npm (node package manager) and node.js.
Here are some helpful links to help you get started:
- Simplifying Chores with Grunt
- Meet Grunt: The Build Tool for Javascript
- Get Up and Running with Grunt
I would personally recommend the following plugins:
- grunt-rev for hashing/versioning your files
- grunt-usemin for replaceing hashed files in your CSS
- grunt-cssmin for css minification
- grunt-uglify for javascript obfuscation and minification
