The Better Way.
npm install && gulp
This will start a development server on port 8000. You can specify an
alternative hostname using the HOSTNAME environment variable.
By default, gulp will use browserify to build the code, so each build will
take a set amount of time. By default sourcemaps are also generated, so you
can inspect your source files instead of the big generated bundle.
If you are deploying the code into production, run the build task with the
environmental variable NODE_ENV set to production. This will minify the
source code, and strip out sourcemaps, making the generated bundle very small.
There are a few arguments you can give to gulp, they are listed and explained
below:
--use-watchify
Using this flag will switch the browserify bundler to watchify. This means
that the initial build time will be about the same as it was with
browserify, but the subsequent builds will be much faster due to the way
watchify only rebuilds the code that has changed.
If this flag is active, changes to the source code do not trigger the
'build-js' task. This is intended, since using watchify together with the
'gulp.watch' is a bit volatile, so we use the 'update' event made available
by the watchify bundler instead.
Don't use this flag if you're running the build task on a vagrant guest.