Gulp is a tool for automating frontend tasks like minification and bundling. It uses plugins and streams to perform tasks like copying files, minifying code, and more. The gulpfile.js acts as the entry point and defines tasks. Streams are used to pipe data between plugins. Gulp focuses on being lean and modular by having plugins do one thing each. It is becoming a popular alternative to tools bundled with .NET as frontend development moves faster than backend tools and benefits from being platform agnostic.

1. Gulp

2. Frontend Ecosystem overview

3. Frontend Ecosystem overview

4. Gulp basics
• Gulp is a tool for developers
• Write code, not configuration
• Concentrates on giving you little helpers called plugins supposed to
do one and only one thing.
• There’s no “advanced” of gulp
• Gulp stays lean and provides very minimum to accomplish the task.

5. Gulpfile
• gulpfile.js is an entry point that will be reach when executing gulp
commandName

6. streams
var fs = require("fs");
var readStream = fs.createReadStream("./file1.txt");
var writeStream = fs.createWriteStream("./output.txt")
readStream.pipe(writeStream);
readStream.pipe(process.stdout);

7. Gulp Resources
• Gulp official site
• Getting started
• Documentation

8. Visual Studio
• Task runner http://webtooling.visualstudio.com/task-runners/gulp/
• Web Essentials http://vswebessentials.com/
• Node JS tools https://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/features/node-js-
vs.aspx

9. Node JS tools (extensions and updates)

10. NPM Scripts Task Runner

11. Npm/bower vs nugget
• Nuget is not designed for frontend packages.
• Npm and bower contains more packages.

12. ASP.NET trends
• The .NET ecosystem is migrating to the existing toolchains, instead of trying
to roll their own.
• New versions of .NET are changing their task runners to use Gulp, and they
are also switching to JSON-based configuration.
• .NET is aiming to become more portable. Using the tools provided by the
frontend ecosystem (which is by nature platform-agnostic) makes sense in
this regard.
• These tools are usable outside of the confines of .NET (as JS in the browser,
again, has become its own system).
• You'll simply have more options in the long run (and, arguably, earlier).

13. Frontend in ASP.NET world
• ASP.NET bundles and minification is going to be deprecated
• Frontend development is no longer a subset of backend development
• Frontend is moving faster - much faster - than the equivalent tools in
Visual Studio

14. Handling legacy
• Separate backend from frontend. Move to SPA app.
• Do not rely on platform features such as ASP.NET MVC bundles.
• Make your app backend agnostic.

15. Interesting info
• Introduction to ASP.NET 5 https://channel9.msdn.com/Events/Visual-
Studio/Connect-event-2015/100
• https://github.com/aspnet/benchmarks