gulp vs. polymer-cli

[Hans Dulimarta]

I've been using "gulp" + "yo polymer" (Thanks Rob) to manage my Polymer app, but after following all the updates post Google IO 2016, the Polymer team is now heading in a different direction that seems to encourage more use of polymer-cli than gulp. The two utilities expect different directory structure. I'd like to hear input whether I should stick with "gulp" or port my app to "polymer-cli". Where can I find instructions to port my gulp-based project to polymer-cli?

[Carlos Araya]

I think these are two different tools.

The Polymer CLI wraps around some of the older available tools like polyserve and polylint. 

Gulp, on the other hand takes care of the build stage processes like SASS/CSS processing, Image minimization, vulcanization and other related build steps.  If you run these tools from Gulp there's no real need to change form one to the other 

Where do you see the CLI replacing  gulp? 

[fsc...@google.com]

You're right, the CLI currently works independently of gulp/grunt/other build tools. And as a CLI, it's configuration is limited by how it is called and the number of flags it can reasonably support. We'd like the CLI to support everyone (from beginner to advanced) so in the coming weeks we will be looking into supporting more complex configurations and build processes via gulp, grunt, or similar.

If you're currently set up and running with gulp, I'd recommend you hang tight for few more weeks until we hopefully have a better idea of what that will look like.