[_puk]

I've also been playing around with gulp, and whilst still in the 'trying to use it like grunt' kind of mindset, I have seen some merit in using these stream based build tools.

Have to wonder why this all requires new build tools to achieve though.

It's obviously technically possible (npm shows grunt-gulp which does exactly what you'd think), so is the grunt architecture so firmly rooted in files that streams could not be leveraged, or is it something that will come in time?

Personally managed to get a nigh on perfect build process using grunt-watch, so no rush to move away.

Nice to see build tools still moving forward though.

[tracker1]

I think the irksome point of grunt is simply that you tend to have many temporary directories for various states of files... especially if you use CoffeeScript or other intermediate languages, not to mention merge/minify actions and their temporary spaces.

[AdrianRossouw]

grunt takes an almost entirely declarative approach, which becomes really hard to reconcile with situations that the order of execution really matters. because you are basically trying to map a flat(ish) array of commands onto a tree-like structure to trick the grunt internals to work the way you need them to.

You can either do this explicitly (by setting up aliased), or implicitly (by all the temporary file watch jiggery and pokery).

It's unlikely that I will start any new projects with grunt, even though I know it a lot better than gulp right now.

[iamstef]

ya, grunt tends to suffer from an massive explosion of complexity