[graypegg]

I've always found it weird that the NPM ecosystem doesn't have something like Rake from the Ruby world to run tasks. Javascript things tend to be VERY task heavy, with dev servers, bundlers, testing, and coverage all being defined in the project normally.

The package.json scripts "work", but it's quite clunky, and relying on shell scripts that run node.js scripts causes issues. (cross-env solving a problem that really shouldn't exist.)

[williamdclt]

I’m of the opinion that the package.json scripts was a mistake (although not a huge deal in the grand scheme of things): it solves 80% of the problem, which removes enough pain that there’s not enough incentive to solve the last 20%.

I’m sure there’s something like rake that exists for Node, but the community won’t standardise on it because it’s not enough a problem

[chuckadams]

Gulp is still a thing. Or even Grunt if that’s your poison.