In this recipe, we'll make use of the contrib-uglify (0.8.0) plugin to compress and mangle some files containing JavaScript code.
For the most part, the process of uglifying just removes all the unnecessary characters and shortens variable names in a source code file. This has the potential to dramatically reduce the size of the file, slightly increase performance, and make the inner workings of your publicly available code a little more obscure.
In this example, we'll work with the basic project structure we created in the Installing Grunt on a project recipe in Chapter 1, Getting Started with Grunt. Be sure to refer to it if you are not yet familiar with its contents.
The following steps take us through creating a sample JavaScript file and configuring a task that will uglify it.
We'll start by installing the package that contains the
contrib-uglifyplugin as per the instructions provided in the Installing a plugin recipe in Chapter 1,...