Gulp is a task runner for developers. Here's an overview of gulp capabilities.

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