Grunt error task "default" not found

Question

When trying to run grunt, I get an error message:

Warning: Task "default" not found. Use --force to continue.
Aborted due to warnings.

I have already found several posts on this topic, and in each of them the problem was a missing comma. But in my case I have no idea what's wrong, I think I didn't miss any comma (btw, this content was copy/pasted from the internet).

module.exports = (grunt) => {
    grunt.initConfig({
        execute: {
            target: {
                src: ['server.js']
            }
        },
        watch: {
            scripts: {
                files: ['server.js'],
                tasks: ['execute'],
            },
        }
    });

    grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-contrib-watch');
    grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-execute');
};

What could be the problem?

Answer 1

You didn't registered the default task. Add this after the last loadNpmTask

grunt.registerTask('default', ['execute']);

The second parameter is what you want to be executed from the config, you can put there more tasks.

Or you can run run existing task by providing the name as parameter in cli.

grunt execute

With you config you can use execute and watch. See https://gruntjs.com/api/grunt.task for more information.

Answer 2

If you run grunt in your terminal it is going to search for a "default" task, so you have to register a task to be executed with Grunt defining it with the grunt.registerTask method, with a first parameter which is the name of your task, and a second parameter which is an array of subtasks that it will run.

In your case, the code could be something like that:

...
grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-contrib-watch');
grunt.loadNpmTasks('grunt-execute');
grunt.registerTask("default", ["execute", "watch"]);
...

In this way the "default" task will run rispectively the "execute" and the "watch" commands.

However here you can find the documentation to create tasks with Grunt.

Hope it was helpful.