What is a Javascript Task Runner

In one word: automation. The less work you have to do when performing repetitive tasks like minification, compilation, unit testing, linting, etc, the easier your job becomes. After you've configured it through a Gruntfile, a task runner can do most of that mundane work for you—and your team—with basically zero effort.

The Grunt ecosystem is huge and it's growing every day. With literally hundreds of plugins to choose from, you can use Grunt to automate just about anything with a minimum of effort. If someone hasn't already built what you need, authoring and publishing your own Grunt plugin to npm is a breeze. 

Many of the tasks you need are already available as Grunt Plugins, and new plugins are published every day. 

Gulp lets you create efficient pipelines by taking advantage of the flexibility of JavaScript. It is supple, efficient, and provides you with speed and accuracy.

Gulp also has many community plug-ins, and there’s a good chance the process you need is already easily available.

Gulp’s key features are:

• Aspects such as file watching are built-in.
• Most plug-ins are simple and designed to do a single job.
• It uses the JavaScript configuration code, which is simple and flexible.
• It uses Node.js, so it can be faster.

Yarn has the reputation of being quick, secure, and reliable. In essence, what it does is to let you use and share JavaScript code with other developers from all over the globe.

You can report issues or add to development, too. When the problem is fixed, you can use Yarn to keep it all up to date.

Its key features are:

• It uses the Hadoop operating system, which means processes will be resilient and capable of distributing very large data sets.
• You can use the Hadoop cluster in a dynamic instead of static manner.
• There is a central controlling authority which, among other things, allows for immense scalability.
• It is highly compatible with existing Hadoop MapReduce applications.

Require is a JavaScript file optimized for in-browser use. It can also be used in other JavaScript environments. It manages the dependencies between files and improves the speed and quality of code.

It is also stable and provides support for plug-ins. It can easily load more than one JavaScript file at a time.

The key features of Require are:

• It combines and streamlines modules into one script for optimal performance.
• In the case of large-sized applications, it can reduce code complexity.
• It can collect several JavaScript files from separate modules when compiling.
• With React, debugging is simpler as it loads files from plain script tags.

Brunch focuses on the production of a small number of files that can be deployed from a large number of separate development trees. This front-end development tool provides smooth and quick work experience.

Brunch works across frameworks, libraries, and programming languages, which makes it very useful and flexible.

Its key features are:

• The commands are simple and easy to execute.
• There is support for node programs.
• You get source maps from the start.
• It has the ability to create fast-zero builds as well as incremental builds.

References:

https://gruntjs.com/

https://gulpjs.com/