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Updated on 2025-03-10

Detailed explanation of the difference between grunt and gulp

Detailed explanation of the difference between grunt and gulp

Since nodeJS has entered the front-end stage, automated construction has become more and more popular. The most popular ones at present are grunt and gulp. These two are very similar in names and have similar functions. However, gulp can open up its own world under the circumstances of grunt, and has her unique advantages.

  1. Easy to useGulp is more concise than Grunt, and following code is better than configuration strategies, maintaining Gulp is more like writing code.
  2. High efficiencyGulp is more design-like than Grunt. The core design is based on the concept of Unix streaming and is connected through pipelines without writing intermediate files.
  3. high qualityEach plug-in in Gulp only completes one function, which is also one of Unix's design principles. Each function is integrated through streams and completes complex tasks. For example: Grunt's imagemin plug-in not only compresses images, but also includes caching functions. He said that in Gulp, cache is another plug-in that can be used by other plug-ins, which promotes the reusability of the plug-in. Currently, there are 673 plug-ins officially listed.
  4. Easy to learnThere are only 5 core APIs in Gulp. After mastering 5 APIs, you can learn Gulp, and then you can combine the tasks you want through pipeline flow.
  5. flowDuring the I/O process of using Grunt, some intermediate temporary files will be generated, some tasks will generate temporary files, and other tasks may be processed based on temporary files and generate the final post-build file. The advantage of using Gulp is to use streams to process files, and connect multiple tasks and operations through pipelines. Therefore, there is only one I/O process, and the process is clearer and purer.
  6. Code is better than configurationMaintaining Gulp is more like writing code, and Gulp follows the CommonJS specification, so it is no different from writing Node programs.

A simple configuration format

  var gulp = require('gulp');
  var jshint = require('gulp-jshint');
  var concat = require('gulp-concat');
  var rename = require('gulp-rename');
  var uglify = require('gulp-uglify');

  // Lint JS
  ('lint', function() {
  return ('src/*.js')
    .pipe(jshint())
    .pipe(('default'));
  });

  // Concat & Minify JS
  ('minify', function(){
    return ('src/*.js')
    .pipe(concat(''))
    .pipe(('dist'))
    .pipe(rename(''))
    .pipe(uglify())
    .pipe(('dist'));
  });

  // Watch Our Files
  ('watch', function() {
    ('src/*.js', ['lint', 'minify']);
  });

  // Default
  ('default', ['lint', 'minify', 'watch']);

The above is an explanation of the difference between grunt and gulp. If you have any questions, please leave a message or go to the community of this site for discussion and exchange. Thank you for reading. I hope it can help you. Thank you for your support for this site!