Gulp Receipe: Delete files and folders

deleteFilesFoldersGulp.js

/*
 * Delete files and folders
 * You might want delete some files before running your build. Since deleting files doesn't work on the file contents there's no reason to use a gulp plugin. An excellent opportunity to use a vanilla node module.
 * 
 * Let's use the del module for this example as it supports multiple files and globbing:
 */

// $ npm install --save-dev gulp del
// Imagine this file structure:

/*
.
├── dist
│   ├── report.csv
│   ├── desktop
│   └── mobile
│       ├── app.js
│       ├── deploy.json
│       └── index.html
└── src
*/

// In the gulpfile we want to clean out the contents of the mobile folder before running our build:

var gulp = require('gulp');
var del = require('del');

gulp.task('clean:mobile', function (cb) {
  del([
    'dist/report.csv',
    // here we use a globbing pattern to match everything inside the `mobile` folder
    'dist/mobile/**',
    // we don't want to clean this file though so we negate the pattern
    '!dist/mobile/deploy.json'
  ], cb);
});

gulp.task('default', ['clean:mobile']);