Is it possible to pass a flag to Gulp to have it run tasks in different ways?

Solution 1:

Gulp doesn't offer any kind of util for that, but you can use one of the many command args parsers. I like yargs. Should be:

var argv = require('yargs').argv;

gulp.task('my-task', function() {
    return gulp.src(argv.a == 1 ? options.SCSS_SOURCE : options.OTHER_SOURCE)
        .pipe(sass({style:'nested'}))
        .pipe(autoprefixer('last 10 version'))
        .pipe(concat('style.css'))
        .pipe(gulp.dest(options.SCSS_DEST));
});

You can also combine it with gulp-if to conditionally pipe the stream, very useful for dev vs. prod building:

var argv = require('yargs').argv,
    gulpif = require('gulp-if'),
    rename = require('gulp-rename'),
    uglify = require('gulp-uglify');

gulp.task('my-js-task', function() {
  gulp.src('src/**/*.js')
    .pipe(concat('out.js'))
    .pipe(gulpif(argv.production, uglify()))
    .pipe(gulpif(argv.production, rename({suffix: '.min'})))
    .pipe(gulp.dest('dist/'));
});

And call with gulp my-js-task or gulp my-js-task --production.

Solution 2:

Edit

gulp-util is deprecated and should be avoid, so it's recommended to use minimist instead, which gulp-util already used.

So I've changed some lines in my gulpfile to remove gulp-util:

var argv = require('minimist')(process.argv.slice(2));

gulp.task('styles', function() {
  return gulp.src(['src/styles/' + (argv.theme || 'main') + '.scss'])
    …
});

Original

In my project I use the following flag:

gulp styles --theme literature

Gulp offers an object gulp.env for that. It's deprecated in newer versions, so you must use gulp-util for that. The tasks looks like this:

var util = require('gulp-util');

gulp.task('styles', function() {
  return gulp.src(['src/styles/' + (util.env.theme ? util.env.theme : 'main') + '.scss'])
    .pipe(compass({
        config_file: './config.rb',
        sass   : 'src/styles',
        css    : 'dist/styles',
        style  : 'expanded'

    }))
    .pipe(autoprefixer('last 2 version', 'safari 5', 'ie 8', 'ie 9', 'ff 17', 'opera 12.1', 'ios 6', 'android 4'))
    .pipe(livereload(server))
    .pipe(gulp.dest('dist/styles'))
    .pipe(notify({ message: 'Styles task complete' }));
});

The environment setting is available during all subtasks. So I can use this flag on the watch task too:

gulp watch --theme literature

And my styles task also works.

Ciao Ralf