Gradle plugin for Gulp

This is a very simple Gradle plugin for running Gulp tasks as part of the build. It merely wraps calls to "gulp xyz" as "gradle gulp_xyz" tasks. Gulp is installed locally using npm.

This plugin is based entirely on the gradle-grunt-plugin: http://github.com/srs/gradle-grunt-plugin

Installing the plugin

Releases of this plugin are hosted at BinTray (http://bintray.com) and is part of jcentral repository. Setup the plugin like this:

buildscript {
	repositories {
		jcenter()
	}
	dependencies {
		classpath 'be.filipblondeel.gradle:gradle-gulp-plugin:0.1'
	}
}

Include the plugin in your build.gradle file like this:

apply plugin: 'gulp'

The plugin will also apply gradle-node-plugin for Node and NPM related tasks. (see http://github.com/srs/gradle-node-plugin for details).

Using the plugin

You can run gulp tasks using this syntax:

$ gradle gulp_styles    # this runs gulp styles
$ gradle gulp_build  # this runs gulp build

... and so on.

These tasks do not appear explicitly in gradle tasks, they only appear as task rule. Your gulpfile.js defines what gulp_* tasks exist.

Also (more importantly), you can depend on those tasks, e.g.

// runs "gulp build" as part of your gradle build
build.dependsOn gulp_build

This is the main advantage of this plugin, to allow build scripts (and gulp agnostics) to run gulp tasks via gradle.

It is also possible to run a gulp task only if one of its input files have changed:

def srcDir = new File(projectDir, "src/main/web")
def targetDir = new File(project.buildDir, "web")
gulp_build.inputs.dir srcDir
gulp_build.outputs.dir targetDir

Extended Usage

If you need to supply gulp with options, you have to create GulpTasks:

task gulpBuildWithOpts(type: GulpTask) {
   args = ["build", "arg1", "arg2"]
}

NPM helpers

The plugin also provides two fixed helper tasks to run once per project, which however require npm (https://npmjs.org/) to be installed:

installGulp: This installs gulp to the project folder, using "npm install gulp"
npmInstall: This just runs "npm install" (possibly useful for scripting)

Since gulp will only be installed in your project folder, it will not interact with the rest of your system, and can easily be removed later by deleting the node_modules folders.

So as an example, you can make sure a local version of gulp exists using this:

// makes sure on each build that gulp is installed
gulp_build.dependsOn 'installGulp'

// processes your package.json before running gulp build
gulp_build.dependsOn 'npmInstall'

// runs "gulp build" as part of your gradle build
build.dependsOn gulp_build

Automatically downloading Node

To simplify the build, you can say that the plugin should donwload Node and NPM automatically. The dependent gradle-node-plugin does the magic (http://github.com/srs/gradle-node-plugin). Set this configuration to enable:

node {
    // Version of node to use.
    version = '0.10.22'

    // Enabled the automatic download. False is the default (for now).
    download = true
}

Node will be installed in the .gradle folder for current user under nodejs subdirectory.

Getting latest npm on Ubuntu

See https://github.com/creationix/nvm on how to install npm via nvm.

Building the Plugin

To build the plugin, just type the following commmand:

./gradlew clean build

stuplum / gradle-gulp-plugin