Currently the build process defined in Gruntfile.js relies on an unknown state of the checked out repository -- For example, it uses existing dependencies in /vendor and /node_modules directories without installing them according to the rules in the lock files.

For reliable and reproducible builds we need to isolate any local overrides and always start from a known state. I suggest to update the deploy process to the following steps:

• Create an empty /build/src directory.

• Copy the .git directory from the root to /build/src/.git.

• Checkout the required release branch such as develop or master. This ensures that we never accidentally deploy a feature brunch.

• Install all dependencies via npm install and composer install --no-dev --optimize-autoloader.

• Build assets npm run build and replace any version strings as necessary.

• Copy the release files to /build/release and make sure to exclude node_modules and other development specific files. Maybe introduce .distignore that defines all files and directories that shouldn't be part of the final release. Maybe use parse-gitignore to generate the exclude list.

• Now deploy the /build/release to WP plugin SVN or create a release zip file.

All of these steps can be made cross-platform, too.