What is causing this error - "Fatal error: Unable to find local grunt"

Question

I removed the old version of grunt first, then I installed the new grunt version, and then I got this error:

D:\www\grunt-test\grunt grunt-cli: The grunt command line interface. (v0.1.4)

Fatal error: Unable to find local grunt.

If you're seeing this message, either a Gruntfile wasn't found or grunt hasn't been installed locally to your project. For more information about installing and configuring grunt, please see the Getting Started guide: http://gruntjs.com/getting-started

Is this because there is not a reference to grunt in my system path? Or something else? I tried to re-install it a few times already.

@Garreh It's been a while, but try npm install grunt --save-dev from the terminal. This should add the latest version to your package.json. — Romain
– Romain, Commented Sep 20, 2013 at 13:10
Oops - had this with a newly checked out project. Just needed to do npm install! — poshaughnessy
– poshaughnessy, Commented Oct 11, 2013 at 14:14
nmp install - Installs the dependencies in the local node_modules folder. — poorva
– poorva, Commented Dec 27, 2013 at 11:27

Anshul · Accepted Answer · 2015-12-16 11:27:23Z

307

I think you don't have a grunt.js file in your project directory. Use grunt:init, which gives you options such as jQuery, node,commonjs. Select what you want, then proceed. This really works. For more information you can visit this.

Do this:

 1. npm install -g grunt
 2. grunt:init  ( you will get following options ):
      jquery: A jQuery plugin
      node: A Node module
      commonjs: A CommonJS module
      gruntplugin: A Grunt plugin
      gruntfile: A Gruntfile (grunt.js)
 3 .grunt init:jquery (if you want to create a jQuery related project.).

It should work.

Solution for v1.4:

1. npm install -g grunt-cli
2. npm init
   fill all details and it will create a package.json file.
3. npm install grunt (for grunt dependencies.)

Edit : Updated solution for new versions:

 npm install grunt --save-dev

edited Dec 16, 2015 at 11:27

answered Dec 18, 2012 at 6:41

Anshul

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8 Comments

Ryan Yiada Over a year ago

This version must be the old one(v0.3).today I'm unintsalled it,and install the new grunt(v0.4) called Grunt-CLI.something has changed..

Jack Over a year ago

Currently, npm install grunt installs grunt 0.3.x. You'll need to do `npm install [email protected]' go locally install the version of grunt needed for grunt-cli

cnp Over a year ago

I wish the Grunt install steps would address the @0.4. Was really wringing my hands trying to figure this out until I found your comment.

Vinicius Braz Pinto Over a year ago

npm install grunt --save-dev did it for me

Henry Over a year ago

grunt-cli should be installed globally, but it expects you to have a local install of grunt.js in your project. This allows each project to use a different version of grunt. I typically use npm with a package.json file to install grunt.js all any other grunt conribs etc.

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superluminary · Accepted Answer · 2015-03-11 10:23:10Z

197

Install Grunt in node_modules rather than globally

Unable to find local Grunt likely means that you have installed Grunt globally.

The Grunt CLI insists that you install grunt in your local node_modules directory, so Grunt is local to your project.

This will fail:

npm install -g grunt

Do this instead:

npm install grunt --save-dev

edited Mar 11, 2015 at 10:23

answered Nov 24, 2014 at 22:26

superluminary

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1 Comment

Andy Over a year ago

This solved my issue. Not sure how it isn't accepted. Good stuff.

Klas Mellbourn · Accepted Answer · 2015-02-17 18:33:38Z

87

Do

npm install

to install Grunt locally in ./node_modules (and everything else specified in the package.json file)

answered Feb 17, 2015 at 18:33

Klas Mellbourn

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4 Comments

neoswf Over a year ago

I did that cause like a fool I forgot running this command after pulling the new fresh project's repo to mac..... :/

Mike M Over a year ago

How come grunt needs to be installed locally since the command line tool can always be located globally?

Klas Mellbourn Over a year ago

@MikeM sometimes you have node_modules/.bin in your PATH. Also, local and global can be different versions.

Wirone Over a year ago

In my case it was NetBeans' fault. Sometimes it crashes my projects when I do git stash in external tool, here it removed some modules from node_modules and everything stopped working (and was working fine before). After npm install it works well again.

Anthony Kong · Accepted Answer · 2015-01-25 03:26:12Z

27

If you already have a file package.json in the project and it contains grunt in dependency,

  "devDependencies": {
    "grunt": "~0.4.0",

Then you can run npm install to resolve the issue

answered Jan 25, 2015 at 3:26

Anthony Kong

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Comments

misterzik · Accepted Answer · 2015-10-14 19:23:26Z

7

I made the mistake to install some packages using sudo and other without privileges , this fixed my problem.

sudo chown -R $(whoami) $HOME/.npm

hope it helps someone.

answered Oct 14, 2015 at 19:23

misterzik

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Comments

vadersfather · Accepted Answer · 2016-02-05 19:41:52Z

5

It says you don't have a local grunt so try:

npm install grunt

(without the -g it's a local grunt)

Though not directly related, make sure you have Gruntfile.js in your current folder.

edited Feb 5, 2016 at 19:41

vadersfather

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answered Oct 1, 2015 at 15:31

Tomer Ben David

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Comments

Nick Schaubeck · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-07 23:35:09Z

Could be a few problems here depending on what version of grunt is being used. Newer versions of grunt actually specify that you have a file named Gruntfile.js (instead of the old grunt.js).

You should have the grunt-cli tool be installed globally (this is done via npm install -g grunt-cli). This allows you to actually run grunt commands from the command line.

Secondly make sure you've installed grunt locally for your project. If you see your package.json doesn't have something like "grunt": "0.4.5" in it then you should do npm install grunt --save in your project directory.

Max · Accepted Answer · 2016-07-21 12:12:21Z

3

I had to execute the following commands on ubuntu to solve this problem (I know grunt for 1 hour) :

sudo npm install -g grunt
sudo npm install -g grunt-cli

cd /usr/local/bin
# current symlink points to ../lib/node_modules/grunt/bin/grunt*
sudo rm /usr/local/bin/grunt
sudo ln -s ../lib/node_modules/grunt-cli/bin/grunt* grunt

It is dirty but it is the only one solution I found... :(

answered Jul 21, 2016 at 12:12

Max

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Comments

mlncn · Accepted Answer · 2018-09-10 15:02:00Z

2

None of the above worked for me because i had grunt installed globally (recommended in several of these answers, oddly) and that was messing everything up. Here's what did work:

npm uninstall -g grunt
npm install

Only now was a local grunt installed, and useable, for me.

answered Sep 10, 2018 at 15:02

mlncn

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Comments

Pang · Accepted Answer · 2018-11-28 02:03:02Z

2

You can simply run this command:

npm install grunt --save-dev

edited Nov 28, 2018 at 2:03

Pang

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answered Dec 8, 2017 at 6:47

Vinod Kumar

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Aurasphere · Accepted Answer · 2017-08-11 06:42:23Z

1

Just npm install to install node_modules

edited Aug 11, 2017 at 6:42

Aurasphere

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answered Aug 11, 2017 at 2:31

Miku Ghoul

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LJT · Accepted Answer · 2016-03-30 06:44:22Z

0

Being new to grunt and setting it up, I am running (perhaps foolishly) my grunt project/folder from a Google Drive so I can access the same code/builds from either my laptop or workstation.

There is a fair bit of synchronisation of the nodes_modules folders back to Google Drive and there seemed to be a conflict at some point, and the /nodes_modules/grunt folder was renamed to /nodes_modules/grunt (1)

Renaming it back by removing the (1) seemed to fix it for me.

answered Mar 30, 2016 at 6:44

LJT

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2 Comments

hmrc87 Over a year ago

Why don't you use GIT?

LJT Over a year ago

I wasnt wanting to track/versions changes and was trying not to maintain two separate grunt installs, but the above scenario was fairly problematic so I have moved around to github anyway.

user1012513 · Accepted Answer · 2018-11-09 08:02:57Z

0

I had the same issue in Vagrant.

I have used sudo to run the command to install.

sudo npm install -g grunt-cli

It worked for me.

answered Nov 9, 2018 at 8:02

user1012513

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