Grunt.js - How to efficiently ignore (black list) node_modules folder?

Question

I was wondering why my jshint grunt task is so dead slow. Thats short example config:

var config = {
    jshint: {
        scripts: ['**/*.js', '!node_modules/**']
    },
    watch: {
        files: ['**/*.js', '!node_modules/**'],
        tasks: ['jshint']
    }
}

What does that pattern? If I have understood things correctly, both file patterns are using grunt api to build file list for task. That pattern works, it filters everything inside node_modules away but it does it extremely slowly because before applying filter, grunt digs whole node_modules directory recursively (~100 MB).

Is there any way to actually tell grunt not to even look at node_modules?

That example config takes about 30s on my laptop. If using whitelist pattern istead of blacklisting, jshint task takes just couple of seconds. But whitelisting means I have to be looking Gruntfile all the time if I do any refactoring etc which is super annoying.

Current while list pattern looks like this:

var allJSFiles = [
    '*.js',
    '{browser,server,config,models,routes,tasks,schema,test,utils,views}/**/*.js',
     '!browser/bower_components/**'
];

Answer 1

Can't you just add your JS files to a new folder off root? That way you can "ignore" node_modules by not including it in the list.

Sample folder structure

- root
- node_modules
  - jshint
- src
  // your bespoke code

Grunt config

var config = {
  jshint: {
    scripts: ['src/**/*.js']
  },
  watch: {
    files: ['src/**/*.js'],
    tasks: ['jshint']
  }
}

Answer 2

Like Andy already mentioned, I'd recommend a different file structure as well, keeping your code in a "src" or "public" directory for example.

The problem here is that your rule

'**/*.js'

always digs through all directories and only later excludes node_modules, which cannot be prevented at this point.

Not only because of this, but also to seperate code from other assets (images? documentation?), another structure should be the way to go.