grunt required config property missing

Question

setting up a new project that will have multiple grunt tasks that I want to load from task files.

when running my first task, 'core' which is supposed to build the core css for the site, I'm getting an error that I can't seem to resolve. been doing some googling and not finding this specific issue. any issues with the same error message usually were the result of a typo or misplaced curly braces on the part of the OP. Not sure that's the case here, but perhaps someone else sees what I'm obviously not seeing.

Gruntfile.js

module.exports = function(grunt) {

    grunt.initConfig({
        pkg: require('./package.json')
    });

    grunt.loadTasks('grunt-tasks');

};

grunt-tasks/grunt-core.js

module.exports = function (grunt) {
    grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-sass');
    grunt.config('core', {
        sass : {
            options : {
                sourceMap : true,
                includePaths : 'node_modules/bootstrap-sass/assets/stylesheets'
            },
            dist : {
                files : {
                    'main.css' : 'main.scss'
                }
            }
        }
    });
    grunt.registerTask('core', ['sass:dist']);
};

error:

$ grunt core
Running "sass:dist" (sass) task
Verifying property sass.dist exists in config...ERROR
>> Unable to process task.
Warning: Required config property "sass.dist" missing. Use --force to continue.

Aborted due to warnings.

I've tried a few different things. If I change the registerTask to this:

grunt.registerTask('core', ['sass']);

I get this error:

$ grunt core
>> No "sass" targets found.
Warning: Task "sass" failed. Use --force to continue.

Aborted due to warnings.

not sure if this is relevant, but here is package.json and some specs on the system I'm using.

Mac OSX Yosemite
node version v5.10.1
npm 3.8.3

package.json

{
  "name": "TEST",
  "version": "1.0.0",
  "description": "test test test",
  "main": "Gruntfile.js",
  "scripts": {
    "test": "echo \"Error: no test specified\" && exit 1"
  },
  "repository": {
    "type": "git",
    "url": "https://github.com/path/to/repo"
  },
  "author": "me <[email protected]>",
  "license": "ISC",
  "bugs": {
    "url": "https://github.com/path/to/repo/issues"
  },
  "homepage": "https://github.com/path/to/repo",
  "devDependencies": {
    "angular": "^1.5.5",
    "bootstrap-sass": "^3.3.6",
    "grunt": "^1.0.1",
    "grunt-contrib-jshint": "^1.0.0",
    "grunt-contrib-uglify": "^1.0.1",
    "grunt-contrib-watch": "^1.0.0",
    "grunt-sass": "^1.1.0",
    "jquery": "^2.2.3",
    "sass-lint": "^1.5.1"
  },
  "dependencies": {
    "jquery": "^2.2.3"
  }
}

Answer 1

Looks like it was user error on my part.

in the task file, I had grunt.config(), but I should have had grunt.initConfig()

var taskConfig = {
    sass : {
        options : {
            sourceMap : true,
            includePaths : 'node_modules/bootstrap-sass/assets/stylesheets'
        },
        dist : {
            files : {
                'main.css' : 'main.scss'
            }
        }
    },
    concat : {
        core : {
            src : ['node_modules/jquery/dist/jquery.js', 'js/main.js'],
            dest : "../dev/js/main.js"
        }
    }
};

module.exports = function (grunt) {
    grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-contrib-concat');
    grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-sass');
    grunt.initConfig(taskConfig);
    grunt.registerTask('core', ['concat:core','sass']);
};