Gulp is a build system that automates common tasks. As in Grunt, we can compose our asset pipeline. However, there are a few differences between the two:
We still have a configuration file, but it is called
gulpfile.js.Gulp is a streaming-based tool. It doesn't store anything on the disc when it is working. Grunt needs to create temporary files in order to pass data from one task to another, but Gulp keeps the data in the memory.
Gulp follows the code-over-configuration principle. In the
gulpfile.jsfile, we write our tasks like a regular Node.js script. We will see a demonstration of this in a minute.
To use Gulp, we have to install it first. The following command will set up the tool globally:
npm install -g gulp
We are going to use a few plugins—gulp-concat, gulp-uglify, and gulp-rename. After adding them to our package.json file, run npm install so that we can install them.
The next step is to create a new gulpfile.js file in the root directory of our project and run the...