Node package ( Grunt ) installed but not available

I'm trying to build a github jquery-ui library using grunt, but after running npm install I still can't run the command according to the readme file. It just gives No command 'grunt' found:

james@ubuntu:~/Documents/projects/ad2/lib/jquery-ui$ grunt build
No command 'grunt' found, did you mean:
 Command 'grun' from package 'grun' (universe)
grunt: command not found
james@ubuntu:~/Documents/projects/ad2/lib/jquery-ui$ npm ls
[email protected] /home/james/Documents/projects/ad2/lib/jquery-ui
├─┬ [email protected] 
│ ├── [email protected] 
│ ├── [email protected] 
│ ├─┬ [email protected] 
│ │ ├── [email protected] 
│ │ ├── [email protected] 
│ │ └── [email protected] 
│ ├── [email protected] 
│ ├─┬ [email protected] 
│ │ └─┬ [email protected] 
│ │   └── [email protected] 
│ ├─┬ [email protected] 
│ │ ├── [email protected] 
│ │ └── [email protected] 
│ ├── [email protected] 
│ ├─┬ [email protected] 
│ │ ├── [email protected] 
│ │ └─┬ [email protected] 
│ │   └── [email protected] 
│ ├─┬ [email protected] 
│ │ ├── [email protected] 
│ │ └─┬ [email protected] 
│ │   ├── [email protected] 
│ │   ├── [email protected] 
│ │   └── [email protected] 
│ ├─┬ [email protected] 
│ │ └── [email protected] 
│ ├─┬ [email protected] 
│ │ ├── [email protected] 
│ │ └─┬ [email protected] 
│ │   ├── [email protected] 
│ │   ├─┬ [email protected] 
│ │   │ └── [email protected] 
│ │   └── [email protected] 
│ ├── [email protected] 
│ ├─┬ [email protected] 
│ │ └── [email protected] 
│ ├── [email protected] 
│ ├── [email protected] 
│ └── [email protected] 
├── [email protected] 
├─┬ [email protected] 
│ ├── [email protected] 
│ └── [email protected] 
├── [email protected] 
├── [email protected] 
├─┬ [email protected] 
│ └── [email protected] 
└─┬ [email protected] 
  └── [email protected] 

I'm confused, what am I missing please?

Solution 1:

The command line tools are not included with the latest version of Grunt (0.4 at time of writing) instead you need to install them separately.

This is a good idea because it means you can have different versions of Grunt running on different projects but still use the nice concise grunt command to run them.

So first install the grunt cli tools globally:

npm install -g grunt-cli

(or possibly sudo npm install -g grunt-cli ).

You can establish that's working by typing grunt --version

Now you can install the current version of Grunt local to your project. So from your project's location...

npm install grunt --save-dev

The save-dev switch isn't strictly necessary but is a good idea because it will mark grunt in its package.json devDependencies section as a development only module.

Solution 2:

Add /usr/local/share/npm/bin/ to your $PATH

Solution 3:

If you did have installed Grunt package by running npm install -g grunt and it still say's No command 'grunt' found or grunt: command not found, a quick and dirty way to get this working is linking node binaries to your $PATH manually.

On MacOSX/Linux you can add this line to your ~/.bash_profile or ~/.bashrc file.

PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/Cellar/node/HEAD/bin # Add NPM binaries

You probably should replace /usr/local/Cellar/node/HEAD/bin by the path where your node binaries could be found.

If this is quick and dirty to me, it's because everything should work without doing this, but for an unknown reason, a link seem broken. As nobody on IRC could tell me why this happened, I found my own way to make it (grunt) work.

PS: This should help you make grunt works, this answer is not jquery-ui related.

Update 02/2013 : You should take a look at @tom-p's answer which explains better what is going on. Tom gives us the real solution instead of hacking your bashrc file : both should work, but you should try installing grunt-cli first.

Solution 4:

In my case, i need modify the file /usr/local/bin/grunt in line 1 ( don't make this ):

 #!/usr/bin/env node //remove this line
 #!/usr/bin/env nodejs // and put this line to run with nodejs

Edited:

To avoid problems, I created a link with the name of "node" because many other programs still use "node" command.

 sudo ln -s /usr/bin/nodejs /usr/sbin/node

Solution 5:

There is one more way to run grunt on windows, without adding anything globally. This is a case when you don't have to do anything with %PATH%

if you have grunt and grunt-cli installed (without -g switch). Either by:

npm install grunt-cli
npm install [email protected]

Or by having that in your packages.json file like:

"devDependencies": {
    "grunt-cli": "^1.2.0",
    "grunt": "^0.4.5",

You can call grunt from your local installation by:

node node_modules\grunt-cli\bin\grunt --version

This is a solution for those who for some reasons don't want to or can't play with PATH, or have something else messing it all the time, for instance on a build agent.

Edit: Added versions as the grunt-cli works with grunt > 0.3