Defining a Gulp Task

Screencast: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E9axC6M1DCA

• What is a task?
• A task is something we must do to achieve a result.
• In Gulp, we create tasks to perform tasks that can transform our code.
• A task may perform one job; it may also perform many at once.

In our gulpfile.js we need to include the gulp module. To do this, we should define a variable: var gulp = require('gulp'); This will allow us to call upon Gulp to create a task.

My First (Default) Task

After declaring our gulp variable, we should create our first task. This will require us to call upon Gulp to define a task. We must also have a name for our task. By default, Gulp requires a default task. It is the first task that Gulp will look for when reading your gulpfile.js. Let's define our first (default) task:

var gulp = require('gulp');

//define a task with the name of 'default'
// and a callback to perform when the task is ran
gulp.task('default', function() {
  console.log('I am the default task. Hear me roar');
});

(Source)

In your terminal, run gulp. This will have the library look for a default task in your gulpfile.js. It will then execute the callback that you define for your task. The output will appear as follows:

Starting 'default'...
I am the default task. Hear me roar
Finished 'default' after 144 μs