gulp-task-master

Yet another module to help you modularize your gulp tasks. This may seem a bit opinionated, but it was originally built to help with my own personal projects. There are configuration options available to tailor it to your setup.

Installation

You must have gulp installed in your own project in order for this plugin to work. Install gulp if you haven't already.

npm install --save-dev gulp

Then install this package

npm install --save-dev gulp-task-master

Usage

In your project's gulpfile.js:

'use strict';
 
var gulp = require('gulp-task-master')();

Then in your project's tasks directory, create your task files:

// tasks/styles.js
'use strict';
 
var gulp   = require('gulp');
var less   = require('gulp-less');
var concat = require('gulp-concat');
var please = require('gulp-pleeease');
 
module.exports = function () {
  return gulp.src('src/styles/**/*.less')
    .pipe(less())
    .pipe(concat('app.min.css'))
    .pipe(please())
    .pipe(gulp.test('dist/css'));
};

Now, you have gulp styles available in your gulp tasks. It got the 'styles' task name from the filename.

Advanced Usage

In addition to attaching your task function to your module.exports, you can also define task dependencies, a custom task name (that isn't just the filename), and even a watcher for your specific task (useful for css or js build scripts).

Below is an example of a script with all of these custom options.

// tasks/scripts.js
'use strict';
 
var gulp   = require('gulp');
var uglify = require('gulp-uglify');
var concat = require('gulp-concat');
 
module.exports = function () {
  return gulp.src('src/scripts/**/*.js')
    .pipe(concat('app.min.js'))
    .pipe(uglify())
    .pipe(gulp.dest('dist/js'));
};
 
module.exports.dependencies = ['coffee'];
module.exports.taskName     = 'js';
module.exports.watch        = 'src/scripts/**/*.js';

The watch task gets the same task name of the task defined plus a '.watch' (configurable). So the above example would expose the 'js' task, plus a 'js.watch' task.

You may also specify a task that just has dependencies, such as an overall build task:

// tasks/build.js
'use strict';
 
exports.dependencies = ['scripts', 'styles'];

Now you can run gulp build, and it will run both the scripts and the styles tasks.

Configuration

In your main gulpfile.js, you pass the options in an object hash (pojo) in the function call to gulp-task-master. Default options shown below:

'use strict';
 
var gulp = require('gulp-task-master')({
  dirname: 'tasks',     // The directory that tasks are located in
  pattern: '*.js',      // Pattern to use when looking for task files
  cwd: process.cwd(),   // Current working directory configuration
  watchExt: '.watch'    // Extension to append to the end of watch tasks
  gulp: require('gulp') // The gulp instance to use
});
 
// You can still define your own tasks or group tasks here
gulp.task('default', ['watch']);
 
gulp.task('build', [
  'js',
  'styles'
]);
 
gulp.task('watch', [
  'js.watch'
]);

If you pass in a string instead of the options hash, it will put it in the dirname option and just use the defaults as the rest of the options.

var gulp = require('gulp-task-master')('gulp-tasks/');

Contributing

PRs Welcome!

If you have a great idea on how to improve this, feel free to submit an issue or a pull requests. Although it's got 100% test coverage, I know that test coverage alone doesn't test for all use cases.