Reload watch on configuration change

[Grawl]

It would be cool to reload watch task when I change some grunt configurations (like grunt/config/*.js) or install/update something with bower.

[larsonjj]

It might be possible to add the grunt config/tasks files to the grunt watch task, PR Welcome :)
As for the bower_components folder, I have tried adding those files to the watch task, but because of the large amount of files each package has, it tends to crash everything 😢.
So for now, I will avoid watching the bower components.

[Grawl]

Okay I will.

We cancompletely remove any node_modules subfolder of bower_components from watch regex with adding !bower_components/**/node_modules or something similar to it's files array. Like this:

        watch: {
            files: [
                'bower_components/**/*',
                '!bower_components/**/node_modules'
            ],
            tasks: 'watch'
        }

I have not tested it yet.

[larsonjj]

I hesitate to watch all files even with the negation of node_modules mostly because of the low open file limit on OSX (what I use). Read more (here)[https://github.com/gruntjs/grunt-contrib-watch#how-do-i-fix-the-error-emfile-too-many-opened-files].
I'm thinking it might make more sense to add documentation on the possibility of watching whatever files you want, so the user can make the decision on whether to watch bower_components or not.
Add maybe the example shown could add a little more specificity using file extensions:

watch: {
    files: [
        'bower_components/**/*.{js,scss,css}',
        '!bower_components/**/node_modules'
    ],
    tasks: 'watch'
}

[Grawl]

I know about an issue with many opened files and avoid this with negations. This is a code from my previous Grunt build:

            grunt:
                files:[
                    './*'
                    '<%=locals.path.src%>/<%=locals.path.assets_dev.assets.dir%>/**/*'
                    '!./*.{md,markdown}'
                    ]
                tasks:'build'

It watches for all root files that can change something in result. So if I…

• Install something with Bower (with --save-dev it changes ./bower.json)
• Add or change an image
• Install some Grunt component (with --save-dev it changes ./package.json)

…it fires build task:

    grunt.registerTask 'build', [
        'clean:dev'
        'copy'
        'vendor'
        'styles'
        'scripts'
        'jade'
    ]

And viola, we have an immortal watch that rebuilds everytime when we change somethings that depends on result.

It's not an ideal watch subtask but the way is clear.

[larsonjj]

Hmm, this is very interesting. I'll try to test some configurations out to see if I can get live-reloading working with a similar setup to your examples.

Just to give you a heads up, v0.9.9 of yeogurt is up on NPM and has the Grunt config watch task you suggested, so feel free to check it out 👍

[Grawl]

I just made the same locally but added root json files into.

        watch: {
            files: [
                'grunt/**/*',
                '*.{json,js}'
            ],
            tasks: [
                'serve'
            ],
            options: {
                reload: true
            }
        },

So any npm/bower/etc package updates will fire up serve task. We need to fire the same task that is launched because of reload: true just reads config but not launches a build. Now I launch serve because I use it but we can use not only this task with watch, right?

[larsonjj]

Good idea and yeah I think you were on the right track.

I just implemented something similar for v0.9.10 that allows you to watch for changes in any any grunt related file as well as any *.json files in the project root. If a change is detected, Gruntfile.js is reloaded and grunt serve is re-run. The kicker is that I run grunt serve:nowatch so it doesn't restart the server or watch tasks and avoids the ERRINUSE error.

You can see the changes here.

[Grawl]

So serve is only task that uses watch?

[larsonjj]

Yes, that is correct.

[Grawl]

Good.

[larsonjj]

Closing this out as it seems this issue is resolved.

[Grawl]

Completely.