gulp CLI docs

Flags

gulp has very few flags to know about. All other flags are for tasks to use if needed.

• -v or --version will display the global and local gulp versions
• --require <module path> will require a module before running the gulpfile. This is useful for transpilers but also has other applications. You can use multiple --require flags
• --gulpfile <gulpfile path> will manually set path of gulpfile. Useful if you have multiple gulpfiles. This will set the CWD to the gulpfile directory as well
• --cwd <dir path> will manually set the CWD. The search for the gulpfile, as well as the relativity of all requires will be from here
• -T or --tasks will display the task dependency tree for the loaded gulpfile. It will include the task names and their description.
• --tasks-simple will display a plaintext list of tasks for the loaded gulpfile
• --verify will verify plugins referenced in project's package.json against the plugins blacklist
• --color will force gulp and gulp plugins to display colors even when no color support is detected
• --no-color will force gulp and gulp plugins to not display colors even when color support is detected
• --silent will disable all gulp logging

The CLI adds process.env.INIT_CWD which is the original cwd it was launched from.

Task specific flags

Refer to this StackOverflow link for how to add task specific flags

Tasks

Tasks can be executed by running gulp <task> <task>....

If more than one task is listed, Gulp will execute all of them concurrently, that is, as if they had all been listed as dependencies of a single task.

Gulp does not serialize tasks listed on the command line. From using other comparable tools users may expect to execute something like gulp clean build, with tasks named clean and build. This will not produce the intended result, as the two tasks will be executed concurrently.

Just running gulp will execute the task default. If there is no default task, gulp will error.

Compilers

You can find a list of supported languages at interpret. If you would like to add support for a new language send pull request/open issues there.

Examples

Example gulpfile

gulp.task('one', function(done) {
  // do stuff
  done();
});

gulp.task('two', function(done) {
  // do stuff
  done();
});

gulp.task('three', three);

function three(done) {
  done();
}
three.description = "This is the description of task three";

gulp.task('four', gulp.series('one', 'two'));

gulp.task('five',
  gulp.series('four',
    gulp.parallel('three', function(done) {
      // do more stuff
      done();
    })
  )
);

-T or --tasks

Command: gulp -T or gulp --tasks

Output:

[20:58:55] Tasks for ~\exampleProject\gulpfile.js
[20:58:55] ├── one
[20:58:55] ├── two
[20:58:55] ├── three                                         This is the description of task three
[20:58:55] ├─┬ four
[20:58:55] │ └─┬ <series>
[20:58:55] │   ├── one
[20:58:55] │   └── two
[20:58:55] ├─┬ five
[20:58:55] │ └─┬ <series>
[20:58:55] │   ├─┬ four
[20:58:55] │   │ └─┬ <series>
[20:58:55] │   │   ├── one
[20:58:55] │   │   └── two
[20:58:55] │   └─┬ <parallel>
[20:58:55] │     ├── three
[20:58:55] │     └── <anonymous>

--tasks-simple

Command: gulp --tasks-simple

Output:

one
two
three
four
five