Pass custom options to gulp — First published in fullweb.io issue #15

pass-custom-options-gulp-cli.md

How to pass custom options to gulp

If you use gulp as build tool for your web projects, you might have wondered how to pass custom flags to your tasks from CLI. Well, with a lil’ help from the node package minimist, you can add this neat feature!

// gulpfile.js
var gulp = require('gulp'); 
var options = require('minimist')(process.argv); 

gulp.task('show-flags', function () { 
  console.log(options); 
}); 

$ gulp show-flags -abc --foo bar --bar=foo --zoo 
# '_' contains unparsed args
> { _: [...],   a: true, 
  b: true, 
  c: true, 
  foo: 'bar', 
  bar: 'foo', 
  zoo: true }

Usage of flag options is up to you to define your tasks. It's now time to substitute your old:

$ gulp build-dev with gulp build --env=dev