Grunt, cloud deployment and compiled files - node.js

Question

I've recently started exploring grunt and I've done so by trying out the
https://github.com/ng-vu/ng-express-boilerplate seed.
It uses a gruntfile to copy static assets, css, javascript to a destination folder with this code:
dist_js: {
files: [{
src: ['<%= app_files.js %>', '<%= vendor_files.js %>'],
dest: '<%= dist_dir %>/public',
cwd: '.',
expand: true
}]
}
where dist_dir is 'dist'.
Now in the config files it is specified that in development we want to serve assets, src and vendor files from their original location, so the configuration of express for development is as follows:
app.use('/assets', express.static(path.resolve(__dirname, '../assets')));
app.use('/src', express.static(path.resolve(__dirname, '../../src')));
app.use('/vendor', express.static(path.resolve(__dirname, '../../vendor')));
In production, the code is:
app.use(express.static(path.join(__dirname, 'public')));
When I move this to production (specifically to openshift), the index.html template is served with all the script and link tags, but the scripts and css are not found. What I get is 'Cannot GET file.css' for example.
I run grunt build and compile on the cloud and the output is 'Done, without errors', but the files are nowhere to be found. I've tried one too many things and I've run out of ideas. Have I missed out something fundamental about grunt?
EDIT:
The problem was that the javascript files doing the routing are located inside src/server, so __dirname pointed to that location. Grunt however did the copying inside the project root.
app.use(express.static(path.join(__dirname, '../../dist/public')));
This fixed the problem.

Answer 1

You need to expose your assets with a route.
app.use(express.static(path.join(__dirname, 'dist/public')));
You need to modify your package.json file to call grunt after running npm install. To do this add the following.
"scripts": {
"start": "node ./src/server/app.js",
"postintall": "grunt build; grunt compile"
}
Additionally it might be good to define a new grunt task that combines these two tasks.
Gruntfile.js
grunt.registerTask("prep-for-cloud", [ "compile", "build" ]);
Then your package.json would look like the following.
"scripts": {
"start": "node ./src/server/app.js",
"postintall": "grunt prep-for-cloud"
}
Also you should add grunt-cli to your package.json file as a dependency.