[wp-trac] [WordPress Trac] #26791: Rewrite Grunt to Phing

[WordPress Trac]

#26791: Rewrite Grunt to Phing
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 Reporter:  yani.iliev       |       Owner:
     Type:  feature request  |      Status:  closed
 Priority:  normal           |   Milestone:
Component:  Build Tools      |     Version:  trunk
 Severity:  normal           |  Resolution:  invalid
 Keywords:  close            |
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Comment (by bpetty):

 It's true that the decision to use Grunt was made internally without
 consulting the community (no discussion about it #wordpress-dev, just an
 [http://make.wordpress.org/core/2013/08/06/a-new-frontier-for-core-
 development/ announcement on make/core], along with it's corresponding
 ticket, #24976). I'd be great to be able to link to an archived discussion
 where the pros/cons of each were hashed out before a decision was made.

 However, I can tell you without a doubt that there really wasn't any point
 in discussing it to begin with because the majority of the community was
 already quite happy with Grunt (and you can see that excitement expressed
 in the comments made when it was announced). I can definitely also say
 that it fits WordPress's task requirements much more closely than we could
 have ever achieved with Phing, specifically without actually installing
 Node.js anyway for use with Phing in order to still accomplish the same
 tasks, but with a much less flexible task runner. It was mostly an obvious
 choice to begin with.

 That's not to say it wouldn't have been possible to write Phing tasks to
 perform all of the same tasks, however, we would have been required to
 install Node.js anyway, and at that point, adding the additional
 requirement to install Phing as another dependency just doesn't make
 sense. It would have just been a wrapper around our Grunt tasks for a
 majority of them in the end anyway. That's all without even needing to
 even look at the pros/cons of Phing which would have included it's lack of
 support for flexible file mapping specifications that make our Gruntfile
 much more robust than any Phing tasks would have been, and much easier to
 read and understand.

 If you still believe we should use Phing though, I'd challenge you to
 implement all of the same tasks we already have in our Gruntfile with
 Phing instead, and see how it compares yourself. If we were to even
 consider a switch at this point, it would require that you submit a
 proposed solution including a patch that not only proves it could even be
 done, but that it could be done better. If you really believe Phing is
 better suited, I'm sure this won't be a problem for you.

 Feel free to continue discussing and attaching patches, but this already
 has enough votes to close as it stands.

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Ticket URL: <https://core.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/26791#comment:6>
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