Introducing Gulp Launcher

Many developers already have the Node.js toolchain installed on their machines but when I lead workshops there are always a few who don’t. The process of installing Node build toolchains can take quite a bit of time for new users (especially on Windows). To simplify the process of getting the gulp toolchain setup, Bruce Eckel and I created gulp launcher. With a fresh system you can run gulp with only one download and one command:

$ gulp
Downloading jq 1.3 for x86_64 MAC
Downloading Node 0.10.33 for x86_64 MAC
... npm install output ...
[09:13:25] Using gulpfile ~/projects/gulp-starter/gulpfile.js
[09:13:25] Starting 'default'...
[09:13:25] Finished 'default' after 7.28 μs

On Windows the user can just double click on gulp.exe and it will run the default task for the gulp build.

If you want to try it out either download gulp (Linux, Mac, and Cygwin) or gulp.exe (Windows) from the latest release. Or if you want a ready-to-go starter gulp project, grab the gulp-starter project.

I’ve setup automated tests for the gulp launcher on Travis CI and AppVeyor but there isn’t a lot of real-world testing yet. So if you discover any problems please file an issue. Let me know how it goes. Thanks!