barlowm/gulp-help

Adds a default help task to gulp and provides the ability to add custom help messages to your gulp tasks

gulp-help

Adds a default help task to gulp and provides the ability to add custom help messages to your gulp tasks

NOTE: this version only works with gulp 3. For gulp-help that works with gulp 4, see the gulp4 git branch

Install

$ npm install --save-dev gulp-help

Usage

Before defining any tasks, add gulp help to your gulp instance

// gulpfile.js
var gulp = require('gulp-help')(require('gulp'));

Next, define help text for each custom task

// gulpfile.js
gulp.task('lint', 'Lints all server side js', function () {
    gulp.src('./lib/**/*.js')
      .pipe(jshint());
});

Now show that help via gulp help

New task API

gulp.task(name[, help, deps, fn, taskOptions])

name

Type: string

help

Type: string | boolean

Custom help message as a string.

If you want to hide the task from the help menu, supply false

gulp.task('task-hidden-from-help', false, function () {
  // ...
});

However, if the --all flag is provided, even these tasks will be shown. (i.e. gulp help --all)

deps

Type: Array

fn

Type: function

taskOptions.aliases

Type: Array

List of aliases for this task

gulp.task('version', 'prints the version.', [], function() {
  // ...
}, {
  aliases: ['v', 'V']
});

which results in

taskOptions.options

Type: Object

Object documenting options which can be passed to your task

gulp.task('version', 'prints the version.', [], function () {
  // ...
}, {
  options: {
    'env=prod': 'description of env, perhaps with available values',
    'key=val': 'description of key & val',
    'key': 'description of key'
  }
});

which results in

require('gulp-help')(require('gulp'), options);

These are all the options available to be passed to the gulp-help instance, NOT individual tasks.

• description - modifies the default help message
• aliases - adds aliases to the default help task
• hideEmpty - hide all tasks with no help message defined. Useful when including 3rd party tasks
• hideDepsMessage - hide all task dependencies
• afterPrintCallback - a function to run after the default help task runs

License

MIT © Chris Montgomery