browserify-gulp

browserify-gulp is a drop-in replacement for browserify that can be configured easily and has support for watchify to improve performance drastically.

It is based on this gulp recipe, but with some adaptations to make configuring it easier.

Installation

To install browserify-gulp do:

npm install --save-dev browserify-gulp

Usage

At it's most basic use, you can use browserify-gulp like this:

var gulp       = require('gulp')
  , Browserify = require('browserify-gulp')
  ;
 
var options = {
  entries: [ './src/main.js' ]
};
 
gulp.task('browserify', function() {
  Browserify(options)
    .done(function(strm) {
      // strm is a gulp strm containing
      // the bundled file, you can do anything
      // you would do with a normal gulp stream
      strm
        // .pipe(somegulpplugin)
        .pipe(gulp.dest('./dest'));
    });
});

Options

browserify-gulp has the same signature as browserify:

Browserify(entries, options)
// or
Browserify(options)

All the options are passed to browserify internally so you can use browserify-gulp as a drop-in replacement fro browserify.

options.entries

An array of filenames that serve as an entrypoint, as with browserify. Can also be passed as a normal argument to browserify-gulp.

options.watching

If this is set to true, browserify-gulp will keep on watching the all the relevant files and rebuild everytime one of them changes. This is done using watchify, which caches intermediate files, making the builds super fast.

Defaults to false.

options.delay

This is the default delay (in ms) browserify-gulp will wait before triggering a rebuild.

Defaults to 60.

options.filename

The filename the eventual build file will have in the gulp pipe.

Defaults to main.js.

options.logtime

The function used to log build times. Gets the time the build took in ms as a parameter.

Defaults to a nice gulp-like logging function

options.logfiles

The function to log the changed files when watching. Gets an array of the changed files as parameter.

Defaults to a nice gulp-like logging function

options.logerror

A function to log errors with. Gets the error as parameter.

Defaults to a nice gulp-like logging function

Middleware

You can configure the bundler even more by using middleware functions. To attach some middleware, use the configure method before calling done:

Browserify(options)
  .configure(function() {
    // configure middleware
  })
  .done(/* ... */)

A middleware function has access to three things:

• this.options this is the options object as was passed to browserify-gulp, possibly already edited by other middleware.
• this.bundler the bundler that was created by browserify. You can call almost all methods on it (transform, add, require, external, exclude, ignore, plugin, on) to configure the bundler.
• this.done a function that will handle the final stream created when the files are bundled. This handler gets a stream and should return the transformed stream.

You can change these properties by setting them to their new value in the middleware function. Make sure you take into account previous options that might have been set in other middleware (eg. concat your new extension to the this.options.extensions array instead of overwiting it).

As an example, here is a transform that adds jsx support via babelify:

var babelify = require('babelify');
// ...
Browserify(options)
  .configure(function() {
    this.options.extensions = ['.jsx'].concat(this.options.extensions || []);
 
    this.bundler.transform(babelify.configure({
      experimental: options.experimental
    }));
  })
  .done(function(strm) {
    // ...
  });
};

Todo

• write tests
• add examples
• add links to middleware repos
• move to full es6

License

This code is licensed under the ISC license