Gulp is a toolkit for automating painful or time-consuming tasks in your development workflow. It uses Node.js streams and provides a simple API for defining and running tasks like minification, compilation, and testing.

Key Features

  • Stream-based: Fast builds using Node.js streams
  • Code over Configuration: Simple JavaScript API
  • Plugin Ecosystem: Thousands of plugins available
  • Task Automation: Automate repetitive development tasks
  • File Watching: Automatically run tasks on file changes

Basic Gulpfile Example

                        
const gulp = require('gulp');
const sass = require('gulp-sass');
const uglify = require('gulp-uglify');
const concat = require('gulp-concat');

// Compile Sass
gulp.task('sass', function() {
  return gulp.src('src/scss/**/*.scss')
    .pipe(sass().on('error', sass.logError))
    .pipe(gulp.dest('dist/css'));
});

// Minify JavaScript
gulp.task('scripts', function() {
  return gulp.src('src/js/**/*.js')
    .pipe(concat('app.min.js'))
    .pipe(uglify())
    .pipe(gulp.dest('dist/js'));
});

// Watch files
gulp.task('watch', function() {
  gulp.watch('src/scss/**/*.scss', ['sass']);
  gulp.watch('src/js/**/*.js', ['scripts']);
});

// Default task
gulp.task('default', ['sass', 'scripts', 'watch']);

Career Impact

$78K
Average Salary
45%
Job Mentions
3.2M
Weekly Downloads

Gulp knowledge is valuable for frontend developers and DevOps engineers. It's commonly used in build pipelines and development workflows.

Learning Path

  1. Understand Node.js and npm basics
  2. Learn Gulp API and task creation
  3. Explore popular Gulp plugins
  4. Set up file watching and live reload
  5. Integrate with build pipelines
  6. Compare with other build tools (Webpack, Parcel)