增量 gulp 少构建

After a few days of effort, I was finally able to get an incremental build that correctly rebuilds all the objects that depend on the LESS file I changed. I documented the results here. This is the final gulpfile:

/*
 * This file defines how our static resources get built.
 * From the StaticCommon root folder, call "gulp" to compile all generated
 * client-side resources, or call "gulp watch" to keep checking source 
 * files, and rebuild them whenever they are changed. Call "gulp live" to 
 * do both (build and watch).
 */

/* Dependency definitions: in order to avoid forcing everyone to have 
 * node/npm installed on their systems, we are including all of the 
 * necessary dependencies in the node_modules folder. To install new ones,
 * you must install nodejs on your machine, and use the "npm install XXX" 
 * command. */
var gulp = require('gulp');
var less = require('gulp-less');
var LessPluginCleanCss = require('less-plugin-clean-css'),
    cleanCss = new LessPluginCleanCss();
var sourcemaps = require('gulp-sourcemaps');
var rename = require('gulp-rename');
var cache = require('gulp-cached');
var progeny = require('gulp-progeny');
var filter = require('gulp-filter');
var plumber = require('gulp-plumber');
var debug = require('gulp-debug');

gulp.task('less', function() {
    return gulp
        // Even though some of our LESS files are just references, and 
        // aren't built, we need to start by looking at all of them because 
        // if any of them change, we may need to rebuild other less files.
        .src(
        ['Content/@(Theme|Areas|Css)/**/*.less'],
        { base: 'Content' })
        // This makes it so that errors are output to the console rather 
        // than silently crashing the app.
        .pipe(plumber({
            errorHandler: function (err) {
                console.log(err);
                // And this makes it so "watch" can continue after an error.
                this.emit('end');
            }
        }))
        // When running in "watch" mode, the contents of these files will 
        // be kept in an in-memory cache, and after the initial hit, we'll
        // only rebuild when file contents change.
        .pipe(cache('less'))
        // This will build a dependency tree based on any @import 
        // statements found by the given REGEX. If you change one file,
        // we'll rebuild any other files that reference it.
        .pipe(progeny({
            regexp: /^s*@imports*(?:(w+)s*)?['"]([^'"]+)['"]/
        }))
        // Now that we've set up the dependency tree, we can filter out 
        // any files whose
        // file names start with an underscore (_)
        .pipe(filter(['**/*.less', '!**/_*.less']))
        // This will output the name of each LESS file that we're about 
        // to rebuild.
        .pipe(debug({ title: 'LESS' }))
        // This starts capturing the line-numbers as we transform these 
        // files, allowing us to output a source map for each LESS file 
        // in the final stages.
        // Browsers like Chrome can pick up those source maps and show you 
        // the actual LESS source line that a given rule came from, 
        // despite the source file's being transformed and minified.
        .pipe(sourcemaps.init())
        // Run the transformation from LESS to CSS
        .pipe(less({
            // Minify the CSS to get rid of extra space and most CSS
            // comments.
            plugins: [cleanCss]
        }))
        // We need a reliable way to indicate that the file was built
        // with gulp, so we can ignore it in Mercurial commits.
        // Lots of css libraries get distributed as .min.css files, so
        // we don't want to exclude that pattern. Let's try .opt.css 
        // instead.
        .pipe(rename(function(path) {
            path.extname = ".opt.css";
        }))
        // Now that we've captured all of our sourcemap mappings, add
        // the source map comment at the bottom of each minified CSS 
        // file, and output the *.css.map file to the same folder as 
        // the original file.
        .pipe(sourcemaps.write('.'))
        // Write all these generated files back to the Content folder.
        .pipe(gulp.dest('Content'));
});

// Keep an eye on any LESS files, and if they change then invoke the 
// 'less' task.
gulp.task('watch', function() {
    return gulp.watch('Content/@(Theme|Areas|Css)/**/*.less', ['less']);
});

// Build things first, then keep a watch on any changed files.
gulp.task('live', ['less', 'watch']);

// This is the task that's run when you run "gulp" without any arguments.
gulp.task('default', ['less']);

我们现在可以简单地运行 gulp live 来构建我们所有的 LESS 文件一次，然后允许每个后续更改只构建依赖于已更改文件的那些文件.