gulp-help's Introduction

gulp-help

Adds help task to gulp and the ability to provide help text to your custom gulp tasks

Install

$ npm install --save-dev gulp-help

Usage

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

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

Next, define help text for each task

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

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

Hide Tasks

You can optionally hide a target from showing up in the help menu by passing false as the help argument, e.g.

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

Aliases

You can optionally add aliases to your targets by supplying an object with an aliases array, e.g.

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

which results in

[gulp] Starting 'help'...

Usage
  gulp [task]

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

[gulp] Finished 'help' after 928 μs

Override default help message

Lastly, you can even override the built in help message

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

node_modules/.bin/gulp
node_modules/.bin/gulp help
node_modules/.bin/gulp h
node_modules/.bin/gulp ?

[gulp] Starting 'help'...

Usage:
  gulp [task]

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

[gulp] Finished 'help' after 1.05 ms