Gulp equivalent of grunt for VS2015 web template

gulpfile.js

var gulp = require('gulp');
var mainBowerFiles = require('main-bower-files');
var $ = require('gulp-load-plugins')({
    lazy: true
});

gulp.task('bower', function () {
    return $.bower()
});

gulp.task('default', ['bower'], function () {
    return gulp.src(mainBowerFiles())
        .pipe(gulp.dest("wwwroot/lib"));
});

package.json

{
    "version": "0.0.0",
    "name": "TestWebApp",
    "devDependencies": {
        "del": "^1.1.1",
        "gulp": "^3.8.10",
        "gulp-bower": "0.0.10",
        "gulp-load-plugins": "^0.8.1",
        "main-bower-files": "^2.5.0"
    }
}

Here's what we are looking at to replace the gulpfile.js in the VS tools:

var gulp = require("gulp"),
    rimraf = require("rimraf"),
    fs = require("fs");

eval("var project = " + fs.readFileSync("./project.json"));

var paths = {
    bower: "./bower_components/",
    lib: "./" + project.webroot + "/lib/"
};

gulp.task("clean", function (cb) {
    rimraf(paths.lib, cb);
});

gulp.task("copy", ["clean"], function () {
    var bower = {
        "boostrap": "bootstrap/dist/**/*.{js,map,css,ttf,svg,woff,eot}",
        "boostrap-touch-carousel": "bootstrap-touch-carousel/dist/**/*.{js,css}",
        "hammer.js": "hammer.js/hammer*.{js,map}",
        "jquery": "jquery/jquery*.{js,map}",
        "jquery-validation": "jquery-validation/jquery.validate.js",
        "jquery-validation-unobtrusive": "jquery-validation-unobtrusive/jquery.validate.unobtrusive.js"
    };

    for (var destinationDir in bower) {
        gulp.src(paths.bower + bower[destinationDir])
            .pipe(gulp.dest(paths.lib + destinationDir));
    }
});

The benefit here is that only gulp and rimraf node modules are required

@madskristensen for the initial template that works, however by comparison to the grunt version it does not inherently include additional packages if the user adds them to the package.json. They would also have to add them to the copy task here.

You should chuck rimraf. It's an external package that effectively does what node does out of the box with del. Use require('del') instead.

The bower wire-up is messy and error prone (magic strings). I recommend using wiredep here as it "just works" and works even when you add more bower files. Happy to help contribute if you want.

as a side note, if you want a default gulpfile, happy to help there too.