Grunt express server isn't necessarily the most accurate name

[drawveloper]

I know this is a minor nit-pick, but any node server, no, actually, any webserver that can be spawned and prints to stdout could be used with this task.

What more generic names would you guys suggest?

I guess that we could even plead to becoming something like a grunt-contrib-server because this is the only task that works correctly with grunt-contrib-watch.

Ideas? @ericclemmons @paulpflug @justcfx2u

[ericclemmons]

Hah, that's actually true and I never realized it :)

I mean, you could spawn python -m SimpleHTTPServer, php -S or similar.

The core feature is spawning an instance, watching for output, and restarting upon changes.

I suppose it could fork/rename to grunt-watch-server or grunt-server-restart or whatever.

[drawveloper]

Yes, those are neat names but what about the contrib folks? They don't any de-facto solution for running a node server in development.

[ericclemmons]

Oh, do they want this project? I thought they had to sanction it :)

[ericclemmons]

I can ping 'em and get el ball-o rollin'!

[drawveloper]

I don't know if they want it, but I think they should :)

I think it's very unnerving not to have a solid default task for running a server with grunt. Most generators and examples use grunt-develop or grunt-nodemon, both which don't play well with watch.

[drawveloper]

@ericclemmons how would we go about pinging them?

[ericclemmons]

How about this...

Howdy, @cowboy @geddski @sindresorhus! What do you guys think about forking/adopting this project into GruntJS as grunt-contrib-serve or similar?

Per this thread's 1st comment, today this project works well with grunt-contrib-watch to spawn connect/express servers as well as their coffeescript equivalent.

However, with some minor tweaks & doc changes, it can support a wider alternative of servers, such as python -m SimpleHTTPServer or php -S localhost:8000.

(All this plugin really does is spawn a process, watch for stdout, and continue onto the next task)

Let me know. Thanks!

[sindresorhus]

What do you guys think about forking/adopting this project into GruntJS as grunt-contrib-serve or similar?

We're not accepting new entries as the current ones are already more than we can handle.

The grunt-contrib prefix is reserved for grunt tasks in the gruntjs org.

[drawveloper]

Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't realize you guys would need to become responsible for support.
We would still be available as maintainers, naturally, if you would have us :)

Anyway, then, @ericclemmons, I think we should continue with a rename in order to make this more... findable.