README.md #1

<p align="center">
  <a href="http://gulpjs.com">
    <img height="257" width="114" src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/gulpjs/artwork/master/gulp-2x.png">
  </a>
  <p align="center">The streaming build system</p>
</p>

[![NPM version][npm-image]][npm-url] [![Downloads][downloads-image]][npm-url] [![Build Status][travis-image]][travis-url] [![Coveralls Status][coveralls-image]][coveralls-url] [![Gitter chat][gitter-image]][gitter-url]

## What is gulp?

- **Automation** - gulp is a toolkit that helps you automate painful or time-consuming tasks in your development workflow.
- **Platform-agnostic** - Integrations are built into all major IDEs and people are using gulp with PHP, .NET, Node.js, Java, and other platforms.
- **Strong Ecosystem** - Use npm modules to do anything you want + over 2000 curated plugins for streaming file transformations
- **Simple** - By providing only a minimal API surface, gulp is easy to learn and simple to use

## Documentation

For a Getting started guide, API docs, recipes, making a plugin, etc. check out or docs!

- Need something reliable? Check out the [documentation for the current release](/docs/README.md)!
- Want to help us test the latest and greatest? Check out the [documentation for the next release](https://github.com/gulpjs/gulp/tree/4.0)!

## Sample `gulpfile.js`

This file will give you a taste of what gulp does.

```js
var gulp = require('gulp');
var coffee = require('gulp-coffee');
var concat = require('gulp-concat');
var uglify = require('gulp-uglify');
var imagemin = require('gulp-imagemin');
var sourcemaps = require('gulp-sourcemaps');
var del = require('del');

var paths = {
  scripts: ['client/js/**/*.coffee', '!client/external/**/*.coffee'],
  images: 'client/img/**/*'
};

// Not all tasks need to use streams
// A gulpfile is just another node program and you can use any package available on npm
gulp.task('clean', function() {
  // You can use multiple globbing patterns as you would with `gulp.src`
  return del(['build']);
});

gulp.task('scripts', ['clean'], function() {
  // Minify and copy all JavaScript (except vendor scripts)
  // with sourcemaps all the way down
  return gulp.src(paths.scripts)
    .pipe(sourcemaps.init())
      .pipe(coffee())
      .pipe(uglify())
      .pipe(concat('all.min.js'))
    .pipe(sourcemaps.write())
    .pipe(gulp.dest('build/js'));
});

// Copy all static images
gulp.task('images', ['clean'], function() {
  return gulp.src(paths.images)
    // Pass in options to the task
    .pipe(imagemin({optimizationLevel: 5}))
    .pipe(gulp.dest('build/img'));
});

// Rerun the task when a file changes
gulp.task('watch', function() {
  gulp.watch(paths.scripts, ['scripts']);
  gulp.watch(paths.images, ['images']);
});

// The default task (called when you run `gulp` from cli)
gulp.task('default', ['watch', 'scripts', 'images']);
```

## Incremental Builds

We recommend these plugins:

- [gulp-changed](https://github.com/sindresorhus/gulp-changed) - only pass through changed files
- [gulp-cached](https://github.com/contra/gulp-cached) - in-memory file cache, not for operation on sets of files
- [gulp-remember](https://github.com/ahaurw01/gulp-remember) - pairs nicely with gulp-cached
- [gulp-newer](https://github.com/tschaub/gulp-newer) - pass through newer source files only, supports many:1 source:dest

## Want to contribute?

Anyone can help make this project better - check out our [Contributing guide](/CONTRIBUTING.md)!

[downloads-image]: https://img.shields.io/npm/dm/gulp.svg
[npm-url]: https://www.npmjs.com/package/gulp
[npm-image]: https://img.shields.io/npm/v/gulp.svg

[travis-url]: https://travis-ci.org/gulpjs/gulp
[travis-image]: https://img.shields.io/travis/gulpjs/gulp.svg

[coveralls-url]: https://coveralls.io/r/gulpjs/gulp
[coveralls-image]: https://img.shields.io/coveralls/gulpjs/gulp/master.svg

[gitter-url]: https://gitter.im/gulpjs/gulp
[gitter-image]: https://badges.gitter.im/gulpjs/gulp.png