Allow running external tasks in the watch loop

[jeffmay]

This would be really nice and shouldn't be hard to do with grunt.

[basarat]

At the point where people have other tasks people should perhaps learn and use grunt watch

[jeffmay]

At first I was thinking that we could just let grunt-contrib-watch do the work by splitting up the code-gen and compilation into separate tasks, but after looking into the code, I can see why you want to perform the watching from grunt-ts. You can optimize some long running tasks better.

So I think the other direction of enlisting a watch program from within grunt-ts might be the best solution. It's pretty easy to call another task from within a task, so I was thinking we could hold a sequence of task names in memory and call all of them during the main watch loop. We would have 3 queues that you can register tasks,

1. beforeCodeGen
2. beforeCompile
3. onComplete

I don't think we will need to get more granular than that. What do you think?

[basarat]

I don't think we will need to get more granular than that

agreed 👍

[mthompson]

Has the enhancement been implemented that jeffmay suggested. I have need for such functionality. I would like to uglify after the compiling of all TypeScript files have completed. I attempted to do so using various combinations, but each failed, as uglify task never executes:

gruntfile.js

module.exports = function (grunt) {
// load the task
grunt.loadNpmTasks("grunt-ts");

// Configure grunt here
grunt.initConfig({
    ts: {
        // A specific target
        dev: {
            // The source TypeScript files, http://gruntjs.com/configuring-tasks#files
            src: ["app/**/*.ts"],
            // The source html files, https://github.com/grunt-ts/grunt-ts#html-2-typescript-support   
            //html: ["test/work/**/*.tpl.html"], 
            // If specified, generate this file that to can use for reference management
            reference: "app/reference.ts",
            // If specified, generate an out.js file which is the merged js file
            out: 'app/app.cmb.js',
            // If specified, the generate JavaScript files are placed here. Only works if out is not specified
            //outDir: 'test/outputdirectory',
            // If specified, watches this directory for changes, and re-runs the current target
            watch:'app',
            // Use to override the default options, http://gruntjs.com/configuring-tasks#options
            options: {
                // 'es3' (default) | 'es5'
                //target: 'es3',
                // 'amd' (default) | 'commonjs'    
                //module: 'commonjs',
                // true (default) | false
                sourceMap: true,
                // true | false (default)
                declaration: false,
                // true (default) | false
                removeComments: true
            }
        },
        uglify: {
            options: {
                mangle: true,
                compress: true,
                banner: '/*! Copyright 2014 - Me ' +
                    '<%= grunt.template.today() %> */'
            },
            build: {
                src: ['app/app.cmb.js'],
                dest: 'app/app.cmb.min.js'
            }
        }
    },
    watch: {
        files:  "app/**/*.ts",
        tasks:['ts:dev']
    },
    watchUglify: {
        files:  "app/**/*.ts",
        tasks:['ts:uglify']
    }
});

grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-contrib-uglify');
grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-contrib-watch');

// Rename watch to watchUglify and load it again to attempt to run multiple tasks using watches
grunt.renameTask('watch', 'watchUglify');
grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-contrib-watch');

grunt.registerTask('default', ['watch']);
grunt.registerTask('dev', ['watchUglify']);

}

<< gruntfile.js

Please advise and/or provide an example solution towards this issue.

[jeffmay]

The problem I had was actually with grunt-ts-watch. It has a bug where you can run grunt watch to watch all tasks simultaniously or grunt watch:ts but you can't define a task that is grunt.registerTask('watch-ts', ['watch:ts', 'watch-html']). Watch is all or one or nothing. I needed to watch 2 things but not all.

In your case, I think you just need to run watch: { tasks: ['ts:dev', 'ts:uglify'] }

[mthompson]

--- In your case, I think you just need to run watch: { tasks: ['ts:dev', 'ts:uglify'] }

tried that::

ts:dev runs fine, however, you will notice in the screenshot above, ts:uglify never executes.

[jeffmay]

That's strange. What happens if you do grunt.registerTask('buildUgly', ['ts:dev', 'ts:uglify'])?

Are you sure it isn't a problem with grunt-contrib-watch running multiple tasks?