Gulp Tasks Preset

A set of gulp workflows I commonly use in projects

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Table of Contents

• Table of Contents
• Installation
• Environment Setup
• Gulpfile
• Tasks Included
  • lint-styles
  • lint-scripts
  • scripts
  • styles
  • sprites
  • images
  • fonts
  • vendors
  • Default and Watch
• Creating New Tasks
• Environment Aware

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Installation

The preset requires node version at least 7.10.1.

• Install the package through npm. We will include gulp since it needs to be installed locally as well.

  npm install --save-dev gulp-tasks-preset gulp

• Install the preset files by running the executable. This will prompt you to replace an existing gulpfile, if there is any.

  ./node_modules/.bin/gulp-tasks-preset

  NOTE: You only need to install the preset files ONCE during fresh setup. Reinstalling after the files are updated would result to them being reverted to the default.

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Environment Setup

A .env file is required for the gulp tasks to be selected according to the environment. This expects an ENV variable, which can be LOCAL, DEVELOPMENT, STAGING, orPRODUCTION.

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Gulpfile

The gulpfile will only contain a way to register your desired tasks. Provided are 3 lists of tasks:

• tasks - Tasks that you expect to run on all environments
• devOnlyTasks - Tasks that you expect to run only on LOCAL or DEVELOPMENT environments
• prodOnlyTasks - Tasks that you expect to run only on STAGING or PRODUCTION environments

By default, task files are placed in the gulp folder. You can move the task files to a different folder. Just update the gulpfile accordingly:

// gulpfile.js
 
// On the last line, pass the folder name as second argument
registerTasks(tasks, 'new/tasks/folder');
 

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Tasks included

• lint-styles
• lint-scripts
• scripts
• styles
• sprites
• images
• fonts
• vendors
• Default and Watch

Lint Styles

Uses gulp-sass-lint as SASS linter. A default .sass-lint.yml file is provided. For details about the config, please refer to this link: https://github.com/sasstools/sass-lint#configuring.

Lint Scripts

Uses gulp-jshint. A default .jshintrc file is provided. It's default esversion setting is 6, due to es8(or next) still under the works on JSHint's end.

Scripts

Uses Rollup to bundle es6 modules, and Babel to transpile ES versions. Default config files rollup.config.js and .babelrc are provided.

By default, babel is using the env in order to support the latest ES versions. However, if your current project requires more of the latest ES version, you would have to configure babel to support them (such as installing transform plugins, etc.). This is just a barebones to get you started on a project utilising modules and es2015+.

Styles

Uses SASS precompiler.

Sprites

Combines SVG icons into a single file as SVG symbols. Uses gulp-svg-sprite.

Images

Optimizes image assets. Uses gulp-imagemin.

Fonts

Simply copies fonts into the public or dist folder.

Vendors

Simply concatenates vendors scripts and stylesheets.

A config file vendors.config.js has been provided to manage lists of vendor files. When running in watch, any change in the config file triggers the task to run. This allow you to add and remove vendor files without having to restart gulp over and over.

Default and Watch

Default task will automatically run all the registered tasks in your gulpfile.

Watch task will only be registered if you run gulp watch.

The watch task is in its own file, so you have the freedom to customize/override it (e.g., if you want to use proxy for the browserSync, etc.). It uses gulp-watch plugin to allow new files to be included in the watch, which cannot be done with the native gulp.watch.

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Creating New Tasks

Every task should be on its own file inside gulp folder. You may use _sampleTask.js as a template for your new task. The task's filename will be used as the gulp task's name. So a copy-files task should be in copy-files.js task.

The existing tasks are designed to be environment-aware. It is recommended that you design new tasks in such way too.

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Environment Aware

The preset leverages the use of environment variables accross all tasks and configurations in order to efficiently select stuff that will be used only on a specific environment. Some of these features are:

• Local/Development
  • Assets are not minified
  • Sourcemaps are included
  • Linter tasks are available
  • Watch task is available
• Staging/Production
  • Assets are minified
  • CSS media queries are combined
  • No sourcemaps

All the environment variables and other helpers are available when you require the gulp directory. These are helpful when you build your own tasks.