The reasons that you often don't need grunt have been [done][love-unix] [to death][two], so I don't feel any need to lend my voice except to agree. I've also seen Make thrown around as another alternative. Make is a fine program on *nix systems but for node.js it's missing a copule things,
- it is global, you have to specify
./node_modules/uglify-js/bin/uglifyjs
instead of justuglifyjs
. - it is a pain to use on windows.
Now before we turn this into a windows/*nix flame war let me point out, I do not develop on windows, I despise developing on windows, the only time I ever voluntarily touch windows machines is when I'm helping my fiance fix her laptop. But that being said I work with people who use windows and I'd like to continue working with them as I have no interest in doing the heroic work they do with our legacy .NET apps.