grunt webpack Cannot find module 'webpack-dev-server' - gruntjs

Question

I have a grunt setup to bundle my react files using webpack and grunt-webpack. I am not using webpack-dev-server but still my grunt is outputting error as Cannot find module 'webpack-dev-server'
Here is my grunt file:
var webpack = require("webpack");
var webpackConfig = require("./webpack.config.js");
module.exports = function(grunt) {
require('load-grunt-tasks')(grunt);
grunt.loadNpmTasks("grunt-webpack");
grunt.initConfig({
eslint: {
options: {
configFile: 'eslint.json'
},
target: ['./react/components/**/*.js','./react/services/**/*.js', './node/source/**/*.js']
},
webpack: {
options: webpackConfig,
build:{}
},
watch: {
app: {
files: ['./react/main.js', './react/components/**/*.js','./react/services/**/*.js'],
tasks: ["webpack"],
options: {
spawn: false,
}
}
}
});
grunt.registerTask('lint', ['eslint']);
grunt.registerTask('build', ['webpack']);
grunt.registerTask('default', ['watch']);
};
webpack.config.js file
const path = require('path');
const buildDirectory = './node/static/js/';
module.exports = {
entry: './react/main.js',
resolve: {
extensions: ['', '.js', '.jsx'],
},
output: {
path: path.resolve(buildDirectory),
filename: 'bundle.js',
},
externals: {
'cheerio': 'window',
'react/lib/ExecutionEnvironment': true,
'react/lib/ReactContext': true,
},
stats: {
assets: false,
colors: false,
modules: false,
version: false,
hash: false,
timings: false,
chunks: false,
chunkModules: false
},
module: {
loaders: [{
test: /\.jsx?$/,
exclude: /(node_modules|bower_components)/,
loader: 'babel',
query: {
presets: ['react', 'es2015'],
},
}],
},
plugins: [],
};
Error output
grunt build
Loading "webpack-dev-server.js" tasks...ERROR
>> Error: Cannot find module 'webpack-dev-server'
Loading "webpack-dev-server.js" tasks...ERROR
>> Error: Cannot find module 'webpack-dev-server'
Running "webpack:build" (webpack) task
Done.
This error gets resolved if I add webpack-dev-server package, but I don't want extra dependency in my project.
Packages:
"webpack": "^1.13.1",
"grunt-webpack": "^1.0.14",
"grunt": "^1.0.1",
"grunt-contrib-watch": "^1.0.0",
"grunt-eslint": "^19.0.0",

Answer 1

You will have to add it as dependency. Why you don't need it anyway; it seems necessary to in order to run the project in development. That's way NPM allows you to have development dependencies as well. All of the ones that you listed are dev dependencies.
See below:
"devDependencies": {
// ... more dev dependencies
"webpack-dev-server": "^1.14.1"
},
"dependencies": {
// ... more 'normal' dependencies
"bootstrap": "^3.3.6"
}