What is causing this error - "Fatal error: Unable to find local grunt"

javascript gruntjs
Ryan Yiada picture Ryan Yiada · Dec 18, 2012 · Viewed 421.1k times · Source

I removed the old version of grunt first, then I installed the new grunt version, and then I got this error:

D:\www\grunt-test\grunt grunt-cli: The grunt command line interface. (v0.1.4)

Fatal error: Unable to find local grunt.

If you're seeing this message, either a Gruntfile wasn't found or grunt hasn't been installed locally to your project. For more information about installing and configuring grunt, please see the Getting Started guide: http://gruntjs.com/getting-started

Is this because there is not a reference to grunt in my system path? Or something else? I tried to re-install it a few times already.

Answer

Anshul picture Anshul · Dec 18, 2012

I think you don't have a grunt.js file in your project directory. Use grunt:init, which gives you options such as jQuery, node,commonjs. Select what you want, then proceed. This really works. For more information you can visit this.

Do this: 

 1. npm install -g grunt
 2. grunt:init  ( you will get following options ):
      jquery: A jQuery plugin
      node: A Node module
      commonjs: A CommonJS module
      gruntplugin: A Grunt plugin
      gruntfile: A Gruntfile (grunt.js)
 3 .grunt init:jquery (if you want to create a jQuery related project.).

It should work.

Solution for v1.4:

1. npm install -g grunt-cli
2. npm init
   fill all details and it will create a package.json file.
3. npm install grunt (for grunt dependencies.)

Edit : Updated solution for new versions: 

 npm install grunt --save-dev

Related questions

Replace a string in a file with nodejs

I use the md5 grunt task to generate MD5 filenames. Now I want to rename the sources in the HTML file with the new filename in the callback of the task. I wonder what's the easiest way to do this.

Read More
Difference between Grunt, NPM and Bower ( package.json vs bower.json )

I'm new to using npm and bower, building my first app in emberjs :). I do have a bit of experience with rails, so I'm familiar with the idea of files for listing dependencies (such as bundler Gemfile) Question: when I …

Read More
Tried to Load Angular More Than Once

I have a yeoman scaffolded app (the angular fullstack generator). grunt serve works fine, but grunt build produces a distribution that locks up memory, most probably because of circular references in angular. I upgraded angular to 1.2.15. The error I get …

Read More