grunt-extend-config

Grunt Plugin for Extending Grunt Configuration

Getting Started

This plugin requires Grunt ~0.4.0

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-extend-config --save-dev

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

grunt.loadNpmTasks("grunt-extend-config");

Purpose

This Grunt extension is NOT a regular Grunt tasks. Instead it extends the Grunt API with a single additional function: grunt.extendConfig(config: Object): void. This function is similar to the standard grunt.initConfig(config: Object): void, but allows you to incrementally establish the underlying grunt.config object. The intention is that this way you can better logically group all your task configurations.

Usage Example

Instead of writing...

//  Gruntfile.js
module.exports = function (grunt) {
    grunt.loadNpmTasks("grunt-contrib-uglify");
    grunt.loadNpmTasks("grunt-contrib-less");

    grunt.initConfig({
        uglify: {
            "lib": {
                // [...]
            },
            "app": {
                // [...]
            },
            options: {
                // [...]
            }
        },
        less: {
            "lib": {
                // [...]
            },
            "app": {
                // [...]
            },
            options: {
                // [...]
            }
        }
    });

    grunt.registerTask("default", [ "lib", "app" ]);
    grunt.registerTask("lib", [ "uglify:lib", "less:lib" ]);
    grunt.registerTask("app", [ "uglify:app", "less:app" ]);
};

...you can split the configurations and write...

//  Gruntfile.js
module.exports = function (grunt) {
    grunt.loadNpmTasks("grunt-extend-config");
    grunt.loadNpmTasks("grunt-contrib-uglify");
    grunt.loadNpmTasks("grunt-contrib-less");

    //  general task configurations
    grunt.initConfig({
        uglify: {
            options: {
                // [...]
            }
        },
        less: {
            options: {
                // [...]
            }
        }
    });
    grunt.registerTask("default", [ "lib", "app" ]);

    //  all configurations for building the libraries
    grunt.extendConfig({
        uglify: {
            "lib": {
                // [...]
            }
        },
        less: {
            "lib": {
                // [...]
            }
        }
    });
    grunt.registerTask("lib", [ "uglify:lib", "less:lib" ]);

    //  all configurations for building the application
    grunt.extendConfig({
        uglify: {
            "app": {
                // [...]
            }
        },
        less: {
            "app": {
                // [...]
            }
        }
    });
    grunt.registerTask("app", [ "uglify:app", "less:app" ]);
};