Neon and Node.js: A magical friendship!

Nowadays Front-end developers have to handle a lot of routine in every single project. Here just a few examples:

Pre-Requirements

Eclipse Grunt / Gulp tools use the system installation, hence the following software must be pre-installed:

• Node.js
• npm
• gulp-cli (npm install -g gulp-cli)
• grunt-cli (npm install -g grunt-cli)

TIP: Installation instructions for Node.js and npm can be found here.

NOTE: gulp-cli/ grunt-cli do not install Grunt / Gulp on the system, but rather in charge of running the specific version of Gulp / Grunt installed in the project (defined in package.json). This allows having multiple versions support on the same machine simultaneously.

Quick Start Guide

First thing one should do is to define all required dependencies in package.json. Both Gulp and Grunt have massive plugin library that can satisfy most, if not all, of developers' needs:

After that npm Install should be executed. This command installs all the dependencies to the node_modules folder:

Now is a hight time to start working with Gruntfile.js / gulpfile.js and define tasks. All tasks will be available in the Project Explorer view under Gruntfile.js / gulpfile.js:

For running a task just right-click on it → Run As → Gulp / Grunt Task

The execution output will be available in the Console View:

Demo

Here is a short demo video covering Eclipse Gulp / Grunt tools functionality:

TIP: The source code is available on GitHub

How to give it a go?

Gulp / Grunt tools are available via Eclipse IDE for Java EE Developers / Eclipse IDE for JavaScript and Web Developers developer builds before the official Eclipse Neon release.