How to install Gulp 4

Gulp 4 is not released yet and if you cannot wait to get your hands on it, here is how to install Gulp 4.

Install Gulp globally

If you have a previous version of Gulp installed, uninstall it first. You might need run this command as an administrator or a superuser, depending on your system.

npm uninstall -g gulp
npm install -g "gulpjs/gulp-cli#4.0"

On my machine (Linux Mint Rebecca), I had no problems continuing using Gulp < 4 after globally installing Gulp 4.

Add Gulp 4 to your repositories

If you use a previous version of Gulp (i.e. Gulp 3.8.x or earlier), remove it from the repositories you want to upgrade. Don't forget to specify --save-dev or --save so your package.json gets updated.

cd YOUR_REPO
npm uninstall gulp --save-dev
npm install "gulpjs/gulp#4.0" --save-dev

Possible issues uninstalling Gulp

On my machine, previous version of Gulp hadn't been properly removed and I started to get that error when trying to run Gulp:

/usr/local/lib/node_modules/gulp/bin/gulp.js:129
    gulpInst.start.apply(gulpInst, toRun);
                   ^
TypeError: Cannot call method 'apply' of undefined
    at /usr/local/lib/node_modules/gulp/bin/gulp.js:129:20
    at process._tickDomainCallback (node.js:492:13)

What does this error trace tell use? gulp.start() is no longer in Gulp 4 and shouldn't be called, and gulp-cli package should be called rather than an old gulp package.

I ran the following command:

ls -l $`whereis gulp`

And realise I still had an old Gulp file in a bin folder:

lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 40 May  3 11:17 /usr/bin/gulp -> ../lib/node_modules/gulp-cli/bin/gulp.js
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 40 May  3 11:17 /usr/bin/X11/gulp -> ../lib/node_modules/gulp-cli/bin/gulp.js
lrwxrwxrwx 1 root root 36 Apr  3 21:41 /usr/local/bin/gulp -> ../lib/node_modules/gulp/bin/gulp.js

Simply remove old files and you will be good to go:

$ sudo rm /usr/local/bin/gulp
$ sudo rm -rf /usr/local/lib/node_modules/gulp

Something wrong? Fix it on Github!