gulp-help-four

Temporary gulp help module for gulp 4.0 while task descriptions and 4.0 are still pending Adds a default help task to gulp and provides the ability to add custom help messages to your gulp tasks

This is basically a quick rewrite of gulp-help to support the unreleased gulp 4.0 branch

Differences:

• Order of arguments are different
• Works with the new gulp 4.0 task api
• Aliases are treated as completely separate tasks due to the quick rewrite
• help options are slightly modified
• Added hideEmpty option to hide empty descriptions or show them

While I updated the docs and created unit tests for this it is possible I missed something, I did put this together pretty quickly. I'll be glad to look into any bugs or answer any questions but I suspect that once 4.0 is officially released gulp-help will be updated to work with the new task format.

Code cleanup is also welcome :)

Install

$ npm install --save-dev gulp-help-four

Usage

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

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

Available options are:

• description - The default description for the help message
• hideEmpty - Boolean whether to hide tasks with empty descriptions
• aliases - Array of aliases for the help command
• cb - Function to call after the help output has been rendered

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

$ gulp help
[gulp] Running 'help'...

Usage: gulp [task]

Available tasks
  help Display this help text.
  lint Lints all server side js

[gulp] Finished 'help' in 607 μs

New task API

gulp.task(name[, help, aliases, opts], fn)

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 () {
  // ...
});

fn

Type: function

The task function If this is an anonymous function you must include a name

aliases

Type: Array

List of aliases for this task.

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

which results in

[gulp] Starting 'help'...

Usage
  gulp [task]

Available tasks
  help     Display this help text.
  version  prints the version.
  v        prints the version.
  V        prints the version.

[gulp] Finished 'help' after 928 μs

Options

You can optionally pass options to your targets by supplying an options object, e.g.

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

which results in

[gulp] Starting 'help'...

Usage
  gulp [task]

Available tasks
  help          Display this help text.
  version       prints the version.
    --env=prod  description of env, perhaps with available values
    --key=val   description of key & val
    --key       description of key

[gulp] Finished 'help' after 928 μs

Override default help message

require('gulp-help')(gulp, { description: 'you are looking at it.', aliases: ['h', '?'] });

Then, calling

$ gulp      #or
$ gulp help #or
$ gulp h    #or
$ gulp ?

will now result in

[gulp] Starting 'help'...

Usage:
  gulp [task]

Available tasks:
  help     you are looking at it.
  h        you are looking at it.
  ?        you are looking at it.

[gulp] Finished 'help' after 1.05 ms

Post-help callback

You can define a function to run after the default help task runs.

require('gulp-help')(gulp, {
  cb: function(done) {
    var tasks = gulp.registry().tasks();
    console.log(tasks);
    done();
  }
});

License

MIT