Question

Is it possible to start my 14.04 MEAN app with npm start instead of Grunt?

I’m deploying my own app to a MEAN droplet on 14.04, and don’t really need the grunt config. Is it possible to start the app and have it be available at http://<my_droplet_IP>:3000 using something like:

NODE_ENV=production PORT=80 npm start ?

When I do this, the app does start ok but is not available in the browser

I’m new to node and ubuntu so I might need some very basic info. Thanks.

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Andrew SB • February 27, 2018

Sorry to see that your question hasn’t received an answer yet. Unfortunately, without more information, it is unlikely an answer for this specific question will be provided. To answer the more general question: Yes, it is possible, but there should be no difference between the two. In fact, for the version of the MEAN stack you are using, npm start simply calls grunt From the package.json file:

  "scripts": {
    "start": "grunt",
    "test": "grunt test",
    "postinstall": "bower install --config.interactive=false"
  },

More recently, the MEAN stack has moved from using grunt to using gulp. The current package.json now calls gulp when you run npm start:

    "start": "gulp",

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