[Koha-devel] Introduce the use of Grunt or Gulp?

[Owen Leonard]

I would very much like to start using some kind of build tool for
front-end assets in Koha. The ones I've encountered are Grunt and
Gulp:

Grunt: http://gruntjs.com/
Gulp: http://gulpjs.com/

I have some experience with Grunt, and have heard good things about
Gulp. Has anyone else used either in their non-Koha projects?

Adopting them would introduce a little more complexity to the process
of making client-side changes to Koha, and to be honest I'm not sure
of the right way to incorporate the tools into our workflow.

What I see as the advantages:

- Automatic linting, minification, and concatenation of CSS and JS
- Potentially, automatic compression of images and contruction of image sprites
- Overall performance improvements from the above

Disadvantages: A new process to learn for those wanting to contribute
front-end modifications. A new set of dependencies for front-end
developers (Node.js etc).

If there is interest I'd be happy to submit a patch introducing the
process to the OPAC as a demonstration.

  -- Owen

-- 
Web Developer
Athens County Public Libraries
http://www.myacpl.org