grunt-build-control

grunt-build-control

Version control built code and deploy it.

Getting started

This plugin requires Grunt ~0.4.0 and Git >= 1.8.
grunt-build-control also supports AWS Elastic Beanstalk >= v3.5.2

If you haven't used Grunt before, be sure to check out the Getting Started guide which explains how to create a Gruntfile as well as install and use Grunt plugins. Once you're familiar with Grunt you can install the plugin with the command:

npm install grunt-build-control --save-dev

After the plugin has been installed, load it in your Gruntfile with:

grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-build-control');

or, as is often the case with Yeoman generators, your Gruntfile will already load plugins automatically with:

require('load-grunt-tasks')(grunt);

buildcontrol task

Run this task with the grunt buildcontrol command.

Automate version control tasks for your project's built code.

Keep built code in sync with source code, maintain multiple branches of built code, commit with automatic messages, and push to remote repositories.

Setup

Your project must have a compile or build process that outputs code to a subdirectory of the main project.

Add the build directory to the main project's .gitignore, and make sure the build process doesn't delete .git directories inside the build directory. If you're using a Yeoman generator these steps are taken care of for you already.

Options

dir

Type: String
Default: dist

The directory that contains your built code.

branch

Type: String
Default: dist

The branch to commit to.

remote

Type: String
Values: URL|RemoteName|FileSystemPath
Default: ../

The remote to push to. Common examples include a distribution repository (Heroku or Scalr), your main project's remote (gh-pages branch on Github), or the local project repository itself (../).

remoteBranch

Type: String
Default: ''

The remote branch to push to. Common usage would be for Heroku's master branch requirement.

login

Type: String
Default: ''

Optional, but provide in conjunction with token.
Output from grunt-build-control will mask the login with <CREDENTIALS>.
The remote will be formatted to include the token and login.
ex: https://[e-mail]/user/repo.git

token

Type: String
Default: ''

Optional, but provide in conjunction with login.
Output from grunt-build-control will mask the token with <TOKEN>.
The remote will be formatted to include the token and login.
ex: https://login:[e-mail]/user/repo.git

commit

Type: Boolean
Default: false

Commits built code to branch. A new commit is only created if the built code has changed.

tag

Type: Boolean or String
Default: false

If set to a string, adds its value as a lightweight git tag to the local built repo. Try loading your project's package.json as a variable and tagging with pkg.version.

push

Type: Boolean
Default: false

Pushes branch to remote. If tag is set, pushes the specified tag as well.

force

Type: Boolean
Default: false

Pushes branch to remote with the flag --force. This will NOT checkout the remote branch, and will OVERRIDE remote with the repo commits.

message

Type: String
Default: Built %sourceName% from commit %sourceCommit% on branch %sourceBranch%

The commit message to use when committing. It must be a safe commit message for the command line, with special characters and double quotes escaped.

You can use the following tokens to print information about the main project:

• %sourceName%: The main project's name, read from package.json or the project directory
• %sourceBranch%: The main project's current branch
• %sourceCommit%: The main project's most recent commit

connectCommits

Type: Boolean
Default: true

Make sure that every commit on the built code branch matches a commit on the main project branch. If the main project's working directory has uncommitted changes, a commit task will throw an error.

shallowFetch

Type: Boolean
Default: false

Fetches branch from remote with the flag --depth=1. Which makes a shallow clone with a history truncated to the last revision. Might bring some boost on long-history repositories. Note, you must have Git > 1.9 to use this option.

fetchProgress

Type: Boolean
Default: true

Fetches branch from remote with the flags --progress and --remote. Setting this option to false can help to truncate the logs, useful if you are using build-control in a Continuous Deployment environment.

config

Type: Object
Default: {}

Optional git config settings for the repository when preparing the repository.
ex: {'user.name': 'John Doe'}

ebDeploy

Type: Boolean Default: false

Optional way to deploy through Amazon Elastic Beanstalk. Make sure that Elastic Beanstalk CLI is installed and eb init is configured correctly in the provided dir directory.

ebEnvironmentName

Type: String Default: ''

Used in conjunction with ebDeploy to specify a environment name.

ebOptions

Type: Object Defaults: {}

For all keys in ebOptions, it'll build a key + value pair to be passed into eb deploy. Available Options can be found here.

Usage

A common use of grunt-build-control is to commit and push built code to the GitHub pages branch of the main repository, or to the master branch of a git-based deployment server like Heroku.

// Project configuration.
var pkg = require('./package.json');

grunt.initConfig({

  // Various Grunt tasks...

  buildcontrol: {
    options: {
      dir: 'dist',
      commit: true,
      push: true,
      message: 'Built %sourceName% from commit %sourceCommit% on branch %sourceBranch%'
    },
    pages: {
      options: {
        remote: '[e-mail]:example_user/example_webapp.git',
        branch: 'gh-pages'
      }
    },
    heroku: {
      options: {
        remote: '[e-mail]:example-heroku-webapp-1988.git',
        branch: 'master',
        tag: pkg.version
      }
    },
    local: {
      options: {
        remote: '../',
        branch: 'build'
      }
    }
  }
});

grunt.registerTask('build', [
  // Collection of tasks that build code to the 'dist' directory...
]);

In this example a user is working on a Yeoman-based web app, with their project's source code hosted at [e-mail]:example_user/example_webapp.git. To deploy they first run grunt build to build a minified, optimized version of their app into the 'dist' directory.

Running grunt buildcontrol:pages commits the built code to the gh-pages branch of the 'dist/.git' repository and pushes to the gh-pages branch of [e-mail]:example_user/example_webapp.git.

Running grunt buildcontrol:heroku will commit the built code to the master branch of the 'dist/.git' repository, tag the latest commit in 'dist/.git' with the value of pkg.version if the tag doesn't already exist, and push refs and tags to the master branch of [e-mail]:example-heroku-webapp-1988.git.

Running grunt buildcontrol:local will commit the built code to the build branch of the 'dist/.git' repository and push to the build branch of the local source code repository. The local project repository can then be synced with a remote.

Working with .gitignores

You may wish to commit files or directories that are ignored globally or in the source repository (e.g., bower_components), or make file inclusion and exclusion the responsibility of the build process alone.

In order to scope gitignore rules to the build directory only, create a file named 'gitignore' in your source directory:

# Unignore everything
!**/*

# Re-ignore things
...your ignore rules here

Then copy it to the build directory during your build process as '.gitignore'.

Notes

Grunt-build-control deploys to git endpoints. If you want to deploy to a private server this tutorial by @curtisblackwell is a good place to start.

buildcontrol will add commits on top of the existing history of the remote branch if available.

buildcontrol is a synchronous task, and fetches from your remote before each commit or push. Depending on the location of your remote, the size of commits, and network speed it can be a long running task.

It's best to run buildcontrol manually after your build process or as the last step in a build and deploy task.

If a git conflict occurs (usually because another user has force-pushed to the deployment server) delete the built code directory and run build and build control again.

Don't check out built code branches while in the main project directory. Differences in untracked files will cause issues.

Contribute

Post bugs and feature requests to the Github issue tracker. In lieu of a formal styleguide, take care to maintain the existing coding style. Lint and test your code using Grunt.

Release History

See releases for newer versions

• 2013-11-29 v0.1.2: Add defaults for all properties.
• 2013-10-19 v0.1.1: Stable initial release.

License

MIT