Hullo from Gulp Load Subtasks!

What is this and why?

Do you have a long gulpfile?

Do you wish you could split it up into modules?

Modules, like, grouped task files; like, test.tasks.js and build.tasks.js.

Wouldn't that be nice?

If you'd like that, you're in luck! That's what Gulp Load Subtasks does!

🎉 Easy, not-so-ugly, auto-loaded subtasks! 🎉

How to install:

npm i --save-dev gulp-load-subtasks

Alternatives and Comparison:

• gulp-hub
  • Multiple gulpfiles, not multiple modules
  • No globbing (?)
  • No coffee/livescript support (?)
  • Lets you have multiples of the same task and will run them all together
  • Intention: run Gulp tasks from multiple projects at once
• require-dir
  • No globbing
  • Requires the directory's modules into an object
  • No coffee/livescript support (?)
  • Intention: ability to require a directory into any Node environment
• gulp-load-subtasks (You are here!)
  • Supports globbing
  • Opinionated
  • Fully supports coffee/livescript tasks, gulpfiles
  • Works with and is heavily inspired by gulp-load-plugins
  • Intention: ability to import sets of related tasks into any Gulp environment

Basics

In its simplest form, gulp-load-subtasks can be passed some directory ('dir', relative to cwd) and it will find all files matching 'dir/**/*.tasks.js' and load those tasks. Here's that example in code:

require('gulp-load-subtasks')('dir')

You can pass optional additional arguments that will be passed on to all subtask functions, such as a plugin object from gulp-load-plugins.

You can also access loadSubtasks from your gulp-load-plugins object!

Example using gulp-load-plugins:

var gulp = require('gulp')
  , $    = require('gulp-load-plugins')()

// pass the plugins along so that your tasks can use them
$.loadSubtasks('dir', $)

You can also use gulp-load-subtasks with CoffeeScript and LiveScript!

Just change your require statement to

# in gulpfile.coffee
(require 'gulp-load-subtasks/coffee')('dir')

# in gulpfile.ls
(require 'gulp-load-subtasks/livescript')('dir')

and it will load dir/**/*.tasks.coffee or dir/**/*.tasks.ls by default instead.

Basic Example (with directory structure)

Directory structure:

+ gulpfile.js
|
+ tasks/
  + a.tasks.js
  + b.tasks.js

tasks/a.tasks.js:

module.exports = function (gulp) {
  gulp.task('subtaskA1', function () {
    // do things... A1
  })
  gulp.task('subtaskA2', function () {
    // do things... A2
  })
}

tasks/b.tasks.js

module.exports = function (gulp, $) {
  gulp.task('subtaskB', function () {
    // do things... B
    // use plugins!
    gulp.src('*.sass')
      .pipe($.sass())
      .pipe(gulp.dest('sassy-css-goes-here'))
  })
}

gulpfile.js:

var gulp = require('gulp')
  , $    = require('gulp-load-plugins')()

$.loadSubtasks('tasks')
// OR path can be a glob
$.loadSubtasks('tasks/**/*.js')
// Pass in your plugins
$.loadSubtasks('tasks', $)
// Actually pass whatever you want, gulp can chug it /badpun
$.loadSubtasks('tasks', $, "hi mom", { a: "b" }, ...)

// You can now refer to the tasks defined in a.tasks.js and b.tasks.js!
gulp.task('default', [ 'subtaskA1', 'subtaskB' ])