File this one under “tools that probably only I will find useful”. In the course of my normal job I need to copy files to a synchronized directory on my computer (something like a DropBox folder). The files are JavaScript code that’s been transpiled and copying them to the synchronized directory is what deploys them to my staging server.
Therefore, as I work, I need to: Code → Transpile → Deploy → Test → Repeat. My ideal work cycle is more like: Code → Test → Repeat. I want to be able to just write code and then reload my browser, not all that boring stuff in the middle.
The process of transpiling my code can be handled by a watcher (usually grunt-watch or watchify) so I don’t have to worry about that part. Unfortunately because of the deploy step my process still looks like: Code → Deploy → Test → Repeat. (Grumble grumble inefficient grumble.)
Now, one way I could handle this is just to move my whole project into the synchronized directory. That way the transpiled files are already in the right place and I don’t need a deploy step. That feels like cheating to me, though. It means that my project directory has to exactly mirror the deploy directory and it means that all of my working files are also being synchronized as I code; that’s a lot of unnecessary data over the wire.
Naturally I decided to automate my way out of this problem. I thought to myself: I could just add another task so that the watcher copies my transpiled code to the synchronized directory when it’s done! Ah, but I’d need to give it an absolute path, and several developers work on this project, each with different synchronized directories. That’s not ideal. And even worse is that another developer might want to handle the deploy process differently.
This led me to write copytotheplace. It’s a very simple library and command-line tool that will allow copying files to a directory by setting the destination as an environment variable or using a config file (or a command-line option or parameter if you’re using the library directly).
If no destination directory is set, this tool will do nothing, which allows it to be used as the last step in a build pipeline without doing anything unless specifically called-for.
To hook it into my particular build tool and watcher, I wrote grunt-copytotheplace which just loads the library into a Grunt task.
Now I just put COPYTOTHEPLACE=/path/to/my/sync/directory in the .env file in my local project directory and Grunt will copy the files there every time they change. More importantly, when other developers who don’t have that option set run their version of Grunt, nothing will be copied anywhere.
I know, it’s a weird solution to a weird problem, but it was a simple way to dramatically speed up my workflow without harming others, and so for now I consider it a win. Maybe next week I’ll come up with a better way. But in the mean time, if you find this tool useful it’s up there in the cloud for all to share. Just npm install copytotheplace and away you go! (See details in the README.)
Payton.Codes 