Welcome to the Treehouse Community

Want to collaborate on code errors? Have bugs you need feedback on? Looking for an extra set of eyes on your latest project? Get support with fellow developers, designers, and programmers of all backgrounds and skill levels here with the Treehouse Community! While you're at it, check out some resources Treehouse students have shared here.

Looking to learn something new?

Treehouse offers a seven day free trial for new students. Get access to thousands of hours of content and join thousands of Treehouse students and alumni in the community today.

Start your free trial

JavaScript Gulp Basics Improving your Gulp Task Pipelines Putting Multiple Tasks Together

Posted by George Kiknadze
George Kiknadze
837 Points

What does the return statement do in gulp.task?

For example here, without return statement this task does the same thing.

gulp.task('minifyScripts', ['concatScripts'], function() {
    return gulp.src('js/app.js')
        .pipe(uglify())
        .pipe(rename('app.min.js'))
        .pipe(gulp.dest('js'))
});

1 Answer

Seth Kroger
Seth Kroger
56,413 Points
Seth Kroger
Seth Kroger
56,413 Points

Because of Node.js' asynchronous way of doing things. Without the return, gulp would set up the stream to run and immediately move on to the next task without waiting for it to finish. Returning the gulp stream lets gulp know it should wait for the task to finish before running tasks dependent on it.

https://github.com/gulpjs/gulp/blob/master/docs/API.md#gulptaskname--deps-fn

George Kiknadze
George Kiknadze
837 Points

Thanks for answer