Gulp, a task runner built on Node.js, automates repetitive tasks by using its plugins. To use Gulp, first install it globally and locally in your project directory via npm. Create a ‘
gulpfile.js’ at the root of your project where you define tasks.
A basic task structure includes the task name and function to execute. For example,
gulp.task('task-name', function() { // Task actions here });. You can automate tasks like minification, compilation, unit testing, linting etc., by including respective plugins such as gulp-uglify for JS minification or gulp-sass for SASS compilation.
To run these tasks, simply type gulp
<task-name> in your terminal. Tasks can be chained together using
gulp.series() or
gulp.parallel() methods allowing them to run sequentially or simultaneously.
For instance, if you want to compile SASS files then minify the CSS output, you’d write :
gulp.task('sass', function() {
return gulp.src('app/scss/**/*.scss') // Gets all files ending with .scss
.pipe(sass())
.pipe(gulp.dest('app/css'))
});
gulp.task('minify', function(){
return gulp.src('app/css/*.css')
.pipe(uglify())
.pipe(gulp.dest('dist'));
});
gulp.task('default', gulp.series('sass', 'minify'));​
