grunt-bg-shell

grunt-bg-shell
============

Improve your workflow by running commands in the background and in parallel using Grunt.

Getting Started

Note: 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:

``shell
npm install grunt-bg-shell --save-dev
`
Then add the task to your Gruntfile.js with this line:
`js
grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-bg-shell');
`

Sample Usage

For example, say you want to run your node server and also compile coffeescript and sass/scss files all in the same terminal. You could acheive that with the following config:

`javascript
module.exports = function (grunt) {
grunt.initConfig({
bgShell: {
_defaults: {
bg: true
},

watchCompass: {
cmd: 'compass watch'
},
watchCoffee: {
cmd: 'coffee --watch --output lib/ src/'
},
runNode: {
cmd: 'node server.js',
bg: false
}
}
});
grunt.registerTask('default', ['bgShell:watchCompass','bgShell:watchCoffee','bgShell:runNode']);
};
`

Available Options


`javascript
bgShell: {
lsTasks: {
cmd: 'ls -la', // or function(){return 'ls -la'}
execOpts: {
cwd: './tasks'
},
stdout: true,
stderr: true,
bg: false,
fail: false,
done: function(){}
}
}
`
* cmd: command to execute or function(){} that returns a command to execute
* execOpts: options for
child_process.exec.
If execOpts.maxBuffer set to false, 0, NaN or Infinite it won't buffer stdout and stderr for done callback
* stdout: true, false or function(out){}
* stderr: true, false or function(err){}
* bg: background execution
* fail: fail grunt on error
* done: callback after execution function(err, stdout, stderr){}

Default Options

`javascript
bgShell: {
_defaults: {
execOpts: {},
stdout: true,
stderr: true,
bg: false,
fail: false,
done: function (err, stdout, stderr) {
}
},
}
`

Troubleshooting

If you get
`
Error: stdout maxBuffer exceeded
`
You should set execOpts.maxBuffer to false. But you won't get stdout and strerr in done callback

Example:
`javascript
bgShell: {
lsTasks: {
cmd: 'ls -la',
execOpts: {
maxBuffer: false
},
stdout: function(chunk){
// process your stdout chunk
},
stderr: function(chunk){
// process your stderr chunk
},
done: function (err, stdout, stderr) {
// stdout === null
// stderr === null
}
}
}
``