Chaining Grunt tasks

Question

Is it possible to chain Grunt tasks so the output of one task is fed into another task without being written to the disk first? For example, could I compile Stylus files into CSS, prefix them with Autoprefixer and then compress them using grunt-contrib-cssmin without writing intermediate files to the disk? I ask because it's a pain to store and reference files between my source and build directories.

Ben Ben · Accepted Answer · 2013-09-10T21:39:27

I don't believe there is, but I have another way for you. Store the path in a configuration object in your initConfig. By using grunt's built in underscore templates you can have the file path defined once (so it's easier to manage).

module.exports = function(grunt){

    grunt.initConfig({

        pathTo: {
            css: 'dist/css/master.css'
        },
        cssmin: {
            dist: {
                files: {
                    '<%= pathTo.css %>': ['<%= pathTo.css %>']
                }
            }
        },
        clean: {
            dist: ['dist']
        }
    });
}

I also recommend using grunt-contrib-clean to erase your dist folder before it is built. This way all of the files that end up in there have been generated by Grunt, so if you change your mind about a file path or item in there you don't have to manually clean it up. Hope this helps. :-)

Chaining Grunt tasks

1 Answers