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contents/writing/about/goodbye-grunt-hello-tend/index.md

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+---
+title: Goodbye Grunt, Hello Tend
+author: Brett Langdon
+date: 2014-06-09
+template: article.jade
+---
+
+Recently decided to give Grunt a try, which caused me to write my
+own node.js build system.
+
+---
+
+For the longest time I had refused to move away from [Makefiles](http://mrbook.org/tutorials/make/)
+for [Grunt](http://gruntjs.com/) or some other [node.js](https://nodejs.org) build system.
+But I finally gave in and decided to take an afternoon to give Grunt a go.
+Initially it seemed promising, Grunt had a plugin for everything and ultimately
+it supporting watching files and directories (the one feature I really wanted
+for my `make` build setup).
+
+I tried to move over a fairly simplistic `Makefile` that I already had written
+into a `Gruntfile`. However, after about an hour (or more) of trying to get `grunt`
+setup with [grunt-cli](https://github.com/gruntjs/grunt-cli) and all the other
+plugins installed and configured to do the right thing I realized that `Grunt`
+wasn't for me. I took a simple 10 (ish) line `Makefile` and turned it into a 40+
+line `Gruntfile` and it still didn't seem to do exactly what I wanted. What I
+had to reflect on was why should I spend all this time trying to learn how to
+configure some convoluted plugins when I already known the correct commands to
+execute? Then I realized what I really wanted wasn't a new build system but
+simply `watch` for a `Makefile`
+
+I have attempted to get some form of watch working with a `Makefile` in the past,
+but it usually involves using inotify and I've never gotten it working exactly
+like how I wanted. So, I decided to start writing my own system, because, why not
+spend more time on perfecting my build system. My requirements were fairly simple,
+I wanted a way to watch a directory/files for changes and when they do simply run
+a single command (ultimately `make <target>`), I wanted the ability to also run
+long running processing like `node server.js` and restart them if certain files
+have changed, and lastly unlike other watch based systems I have seen I wanted
+a way to run a command as soon as I start up the watch program (so you dont have
+to start the watching, then go open/save a newline change to a file to get it to
+build for the first time).
+
+What I came up with was [tend](https://github.com/brettlangdon/tend). Which solves
+mostly all of my needs, which was simply "watch for make". So how do you use it?
+
+### Installation
+```bash
+npm install -g tend
+```
+
+### Usage
+
+```
+Usage:
+  tend
+  tend <action>
+  tend [--restart] [--start] [--ignoreHidden] [--filter <filter>] [<dir> <command>]
+  tend (--help | --version)
+
+Options:
+  -h --help             Show this help text
+  -v --version          Show tend version information
+  -r --restart          If <command> is still running when there is a change, stop and re-run it
+  -i --ignoreHidden     Ignore changes to files which start with "."
+  -f --filter <filter>  Use <filter> regular expression to filter which files trigger the command
+  -s --start            Run <command> as soon as tend executes
+```
+
+### Example CLI Usage
+
+The following will watch for changes to any `js` files in the directory `./src/`
+when any of them change or are added it will run `uglifyjs` to combine them into
+a single file.
+
+```bash
+tend --ignoreHidden --filter "*.js" ./src "uglifyjs -o ./public/main.min.js ./src/*.js"
+```
+
+The following will run a long running process, starting it as soon as `tend` starts
+and restarting the program whenever files in `./routes/` has changed.
+```bash
+tend --restart --start --filter "*.js" ./routes "node server.js"
+```
+
+### Config File
+
+Instead of running `tend` commands singly from the command line you can provide
+`tend` with a `.tendrc` file of multiple directories/files to watch with commands
+to run.
+
+The following `.tendrc` file are setup to run the same commands as shown above.
+
+```ini
+; global settings
+ignoreHidden=true
+
+[js]
+filter=*.js
+directory=./src
+command=uglifyjs -o ./public/main.min.js ./src/*.js
+
+[app]
+filter=*.js
+directory=./routes
+command=node ./app/server.js
+restart=true
+start=true
+```
+
+You can then simply run `tend` without any arguments to have `tend` watch for
+all changes configured in your `.tendrc` file.
+
+Running:
+```bash
+tend
+```
+
+Will basically execute:
+```bash
+tend --ignoreHidden --filter "*.js" ./src "uglifyjs -o ./public/main.min.js ./src/*.js" \
+  & tend --restart --start --filter "*.js" ./routes "node server.js"
+```
+
+Along with running multiple targets at once, you can run specific targets from
+a `.tendrc` file as well, `tend <target>`.
+```bash
+tend js
+```
+
+Will run the `js` target once.
+```bash
+tend --ignoreHidden --filter "*.js" ./src "uglifyjs -o ./public/main.min.js ./src/*.js"
+```
+
+### With Make
+
+If I haven't beaten a dead horse enough, I am a `Makefile` kind of person and
+that is exactly what I wanted to use this new tool with. So below is an example
+of a `Makefile` and it's corresponding `.tendrc` file.
+
+```make
+js:
+    uglifyjs -o ./public/main.min.js ./src/*.js
+
+app:
+    node server.js
+
+.PHONY: js app
+```
+
+```ini
+ignoreHidden=true
+
+[js]
+filter=*.js
+directory=./src
+command=make js
+
+[app]
+filter=*.js
+directory=./routes
+command=make app
+restart=true
+start=true
+```
+
+### Conclusion
+
+So that is mostly it. Nothing overly exciting and nothing really new here, just
+another watch/build system written in node to add to the list. For the most part
+this tool does exactly what I want for now, but if anyone has any ideas on how
+to make this better or even any other better/easier tools which do similar things
+please let me know, I am more than willing to continue maintaining this tool.