Use Grunt programmatically from JavaScript

[auscaster]

This fix allows Grunt to be used programmatically from JavaScript without the need for a Gruntfile, like so:

var grunt = require('grunt');

grunt.initConfig({
    pkg: {
        "name" : "grunt-prog-test",
        "version" : "0.0.1",
        "devDependencies": {    
            "grunt": "~0.4.2",
            "grunt-contrib-concat": "~0.1.3",
            "grunt-contrib-cssmin" : "~0.6.1"
        }
    },
    concat: {
        css: {
            src: [
                'src/*.css'
            ],
            dest: 'dist/test.css'
        }
    },
    cssmin: {
        css: {
            src: 'dist/test.css',
            dest: 'dist/test.min.css'
        }
    }
});

grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-contrib-concat');
grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-contrib-cssmin');

grunt.tasks([ 'concat:css', 'cssmin:css' ], { verbose: true, nogruntfile: true }, function () { 
  console.log('done')
});

[logankoester]

👍 Yes, please!

[auscaster]

Just to give a little more info: this PR adds a 'nogruntfile' options which bypasses the Gruntfile presence check and resulting exception in task.js task.init(). Other than that everything works as expected when manually calling grunt.tasks().

PS. Sorry for the confusion regarding the gruntjs/grunt-init#64, this PR is a standalone issue...

[stevenvachon]

+1

[xcambar]

Great, I'd love to see this merged!

[cowboy]

Will this do what you want it to?
https://github.com/gruntjs/grunt/compare/pr1108?expand=1

This is the code I used to test (from within the Grunt project root directory):

var grunt = require('./lib/grunt');

grunt.initConfig({
  pkg: grunt.file.readJSON('./package.json'),
  bar: {
    options: {a: 1, b: 2},
    one: {},
    two: {
      options: {b: 3, c: 4},
    },
  },
});

grunt.registerTask('foo', function() {
  console.log(grunt.config('pkg.name'), grunt.config('pkg.version'));
});

grunt.registerMultiTask('bar', function() {
  console.log(this.options());
});

grunt.tasks(['foo', 'bar'], {gruntfile: false}, function() {
  console.log('done');
});

/cc @vladikoff @shama @tkellen because I'm trying to figure out if I haven't accounted for something critical, that will cause backward-compatibility issues.

[cowboy]

FWIW, there may be other things that prevent Grunt from playing nicely when run as a lib, for example, the way it handles process.exit() and uncaught exceptions. If these are issues, perhaps they can be dealt with separately.

[vladikoff]

ping @auscaster

[auscaster]

Thanks @cowboy, your patch works fine for me using your test code and my own.

Can't see any obvious issues using the grunt core this way, but as you say some dependencies and other grunt modules may be problematic (haven't found any probs yet though) :)