How to speedup Grunt watch task

grunt
tomoyukikashiro
tomoyukikashiro

Edit Gruntfile.js

Before

    watch: {
      js: {
        files: ['<%= yeoman.app %>/scripts/{,*/}*.js'],
        tasks: ['newer:jshint:all'],
        options: {
          livereload: true
        }
      }
    }

After

    watch: {
      options: {
        spawn: false // add spawn option in watch task
      },
      js: {
        files: ['<%= yeoman.app %>/scripts/{,*/}*.js'],
        tasks: ['newer:jshint:all'],
        options: {
          livereload: true
        }
      },

Result

50% speedup ( 4s -> 2s )

Before

Running "watch" task
Waiting...OK
>> File "app/styles/page/_about.scss" changed.

Running "compass:server" (compass) task
overwrite .tmp/styles/main.css (0.604s)
Compilation took 1.039s

Running "autoprefixer:dist" (autoprefixer) task
Prefixed file ".tmp/styles/main.css" created.

Done, without errors.


Execution Time (2014-02-24 02:57:19 UTC)
compass:server      3.9s  ▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇▇ 97%
autoprefixer:dist  120ms  ▇▇▇▇▇ 3%
Total 4s

After

Running "watch" task
Waiting...OK
>> File "app/styles/page/_about.scss" changed.


Running "compass:server" (compass) task
overwrite .tmp/styles/main.css (0.583s)
Compilation took 0.814s

Running "autoprefixer:dist" (autoprefixer) task
Prefixed file ".tmp/styles/main.css" created.

Running "watch" task
Completed in 2.063s at Mon Feb 24 2014 11:59:12 GMT+0900 (JST) - Waiting...

Why the watch task speedup

I think that the bottleneck of watch task is to execute this task in a child process. so if you set spawn option to false the watch task execute in a same context.

Attention

There is an attention in the original site

Whether to spawn task runs in a child process. Setting this option to false speeds up the reaction time of the watch (usually 500ms faster for most) and allows subsequent task runs to share the same context. Not spawning task runs can make the watch more prone to failing so please use as needed.

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