gulp-changed

Only pass through changed files

No more wasting precious time on processing unchanged files.

By default it's only able to detect whether files in the stream changed. If you require something more advanced like knowing if imports/dependencies changed, create a custom comparator, or use another plugin.

Install

$ npm install --save-dev gulp-changed

Usage

const gulp = require('gulp');
const changed = require('gulp-changed');
const ngAnnotate = require('gulp-ng-annotate'); // Just as an example
 
const SOURCE = 'src/*.js';
const DESTINATION = 'dist';
 
exports.default = () => (
    gulp.src(SOURCE)
        .pipe(changed(DESTINATION))
        // `ngAnnotate` will only get the files that
        // changed since the last time it was run
        .pipe(ngAnnotate())
        .pipe(gulp.dest(DESTINATION))
);

API

changed(destination, options?)

destination

Type: string | Function

Destination directory. Same as you put into gulp.dest().

This is needed to be able to compare the current files with the destination files.

Can also be a function returning a destination directory path.

options

Type: object

cwd

Type: string
Default: process.cwd()

Working directory the folder is relative to.

extension

Type: string

Extension of the destination files.

Useful if it differs from the original, like in the example below:

exports.jade = () => (
    gulp.src('src/**/*.jade')
        .pipe(changed('app', {extension: '.html'}))
        .pipe(jade())
        .pipe(gulp.dest('app'))
);

hasChanged

Type: Function
Default: changed.compareLastModifiedTime

Function that determines whether the source file is different from the destination file.

Built-in comparators

• changed.compareLastModifiedTime
• changed.compareContents

Example

exports.jade = () => (
    gulp.src('src/**/*.jade')
        .pipe(changed('app', {hasChanged: changed.compareContents}))
        .pipe(jade())
        .pipe(gulp.dest('app'))
);

You can also supply a custom comparator function which will receive the following arguments and should return Promise.

• stream (transform object stream) - Should be used to queue sourceFile if it passes some comparison
• sourceFile (Vinyl file object)
• destPath (string) - Destination for sourceFile as an absolute path

transformPath

Type: Function

Function to transform the path to the destination file. Should return the absolute path to the (renamed) destination file.

Useful if you rename your file later on, like in the below example:

exports.marked = () => (
    gulp.src('src/content/about.md')
        .pipe(changed('dist', {transformPath: newPath => path.join(path.dirname(newPath), path.basename(newPath, '.md'), 'index.html')}))
        .pipe(marked())
        .pipe(rename(newPath => path.join(path.dirname(newPath), path.basename(newPath, '.md'), 'index.html'))))
        .pipe(gulp.dest('dist'))
);

In-place change monitoring

If you're looking to process source files in-place without any build output (formatting, linting, etc), have a look at gulp-changed-in-place.