Hi, I’m just about to start a new project and was wondering if the Gulp branch was ready enough to be used. I know the answer depends somewhat on my capability, which to be honest is quite limited in terms of fine tuning Gulp settings. I’ve been very happy with Grunt but really just curious.
It’s gone through quite a few changes. I wrote it to closely mirror the Gruntfile, but we’ve had some more input have experimented with it. Currently it’s set up now to have an assets/src and assets/dist folder, which is nice to have that separation of compiled files. We’re also experimenting with ‘main-bower-files’ which automatically loads the main Bower .js files to the scripts.js file.
There has been discussion over on Github if you’re interested in some of that.
Also, while it does work, it’s not bug-free like the Gruntfile.js, so if you’re worried, I would say stick with Grunt for now.
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Thanks, your answer was exactly what I needed to hear. I’ve been following the development but when you folk get in to the nitty gritty it gets a bit beyond me. This roots community is really quite amazing, I have learnt so much just hanging out. Thanks for taking the time to respond.
I’ve done 2 small projects with the gulp branch. I’ve not run into any major issues… nothing tweaking wouldn’t fix, and possibly just due to my preferences. Having said that, the last time I checked out the branch was around early October, and the changes @kalenjohnson mention weren’t there yet. I know those changes are in the right direction, but I haven’t tried them out yet.
I didn’t want to start an entire new thread, so I figured I would check the status of the Gulp Branch here.
I was wondering if there was any goal or plan in terms of a stable release. I am about to start a few new projects and I want to make the transition over to it, but it seems to still be in flux with commits coming in 17 hrs ago as of this message. I checked it out and got it going, but I noticed that css minify is currently absent as things fluctuate.
Very true, @aaa made a huge amount of updates and did quite a few cool things to help us make the gulp file much more flexible and easy to work with. It’s doing some rather magical things now, like auto loading Bower files you have installed, and can compile SASS or LESS, or both, depending on if those files exist. Pretty exciting times ahead for us 
By the way, everyone is free to download the gulp branch and give it a try. We’ve been playing with it but the more people who test it the better.
And also so everyone knows, although we’ve been mentioning the branch here on Discourse, most of the conversation has been happening on Github.
^ what he said
At this point, I wouldn’t personally deem it “ready” yet, but it is at least ready for some testing if anyone feels inclined.
absolutely @JulienMelissas, and I would be inclined to help finish it out too, is there a goal list or anything that might help pushing to a stable release? I read the long discussion on github around the awesome changes made, but there seem to be a little disorganization in what will be quite a hefty and breaking change.
Yes, some of the updates in the gulp branch sort of go along with the long running and sporadic discussions we’ve had about making Roots CSS Framework agnostic. But it’s been tied to Bootstrap for some time now, and so has the Grunt and gulp files, LESS specifically. The gulp branch is one of the large updates to bring us closer to that goal.
Just following up to check again on the readiness of the gulp branch. I haven’t used roots or grunt that much but plan to use roots extensively in 2015. Is the gulp branch considered stable yet? If not, I think I would be better off continuing with grunt for now as I did get that working on a previous project.
Honestly, in my opinion (this goes with almost any Open Source project unless they specifically say otherwise) if the branch has not been merged into master, it’s not quite ready for prime time as much as whatever is in master.
TLDR (you’re lazy): no, use grunt until we officially merge it, but don’t get too attached because it will happen soon! The transition will not be that crazy anyways.
@codecowboy You can follow along here: https://github.com/roots/roots/pull/1251
I have thoroughly commented up the gulpfile: https://github.com/roots/roots/blob/8.0.0/gulpfile.js
So perhaps you can have more visibility on what exactly is going on in there.
I also have started to add documentation over at: https://github.com/austinpray/asset-builder
asset-builder is the manifest file format that the gulp branch uses to collect all the assets and put them in order. Asset-builder should be stable now, I have already locked in the manifest file format specification. We will not deviate from this unless there is a really good reason for doing so. Here is an example manifest.json https://github.com/roots/roots/blob/8.0.0/assets/manifest.json
Reviewing, asking questions, giving feedback on the 8.0.0 branch is the surest way to make sure our docs are comprehensive and to get a feel for how stable everything is.
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Looking at Codecowboy’s original question about a month ago, is there an idea of when 8.0 will officially be merged into the master?
I’ve actually been using 6.5.2 for 2014 (even when it went to 7.0) as I was used to the process and it was working well for me. Thinking of doing much of what Codecowboy was mentioning for a couple projects next month, but wondering if I should keep to what I was doing or a good time to make a change.
Thanks.
It will be merged into master when it’s ready. It’s hard to say exactly especially since at times it’s been blocked by issues in 3rd party packages. The answer is always “hopefully soon” although it really is getting close.
I would generally agree that unless you are familiar and confident with the changes I would avoid it until its merged. I’ve been experimenting with and using it with success, but I’m also not new to the modern processes it uses and currently not using it for paying clients.
Thanks for the responses. Yes, they are paying clients. So, maybe I won’t subject them to me bumbling about with something new seeing that I already have a process down. I’ve been using 6.5 for awhile now. I never transitioned to 7 because I knew Gulp was coming and I wanted things to be more set. I look forward to 8.0.
Definitely encourage you to clone 8.0.0 down and play with it. We definitely could use extra pairs of eyes.
I’d love to clone 8.0.0 but I’ve never actually set up a full fledged node workflow before.
Has anyone put together a sweet walkthrough like roots 7.0 has for getting set up with grunt and such?
