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gulp-rsync

Use the file transferring and syncing capabilities of rsync within your Gulp task. gulp-rsync calls rsync and offers you a subset of options for an easy setup.

Prerequisites

rsync needs to be installed on your machine and must be sitting in your PATH.

Installation

npm install gulp-rsync --save-dev

Usage

var gulp = require('gulp');
var rsync = require('gulp-rsync');

gulp.task('deploy', function() {
  return gulp.src('build/**')
    .pipe(rsync({
      root: 'build/',
      hostname: 'example.com',
      destination: 'path/to/site/'
    }));
});

A common parameter set for rsync is

rsync -avz ...

This can be achieved by:

var gulp = require('gulp');
var rsync = require('gulp-rsync');

gulp.task('deploy', function() {
  gulp.src('build/**')
    .pipe(rsync({
      root: 'build/',
      hostname: 'example.com',
      destination: 'path/to/site/',
      archive: true,
      silent: false,
      compress: true
    }));
});

Note that rsync does not synchronize your build/-directory if you give it a trailing /.

rsync OPTIONS

rsync-gulp implements the following options of rsync. See the official documentation for more information.

-a, --archive       archive mode; equals -rlptgoD (no -H,-A,-X)
-c, --checksum      skip based on checksum, not mod-time & size
-d, --dirs          transfer directories without recursing
-e, --rsh=COMMAND   specify the remote shell to use
-n, --dry-run       perform a trial run with no changes made
-r, --recursive     recurse into directories
-R, --relative      use relative path names
-t, --times         preserve modification times
-u, --update        skip files that are newer on the receiver
-v, --verbose       increase verbosity
-z, --compress      compress file data during the transfer
--chmod             affect file and/or directory permissions
--delete            delete extraneous files from destination dirs
--exclude=PATTERN   exclude files matching PATTERN
--include=PATTERN   don't exclude files matching PATTERN
--port=PORT         specify double-colon alternate port number
--progress          show progress during transfer

Windows users

When you are syncing from Windows to Unix you might encounter permission errors or issues resulting from these. A reason can be that rsync tries to preserve NTFS file attributes in UNIX. This behaviour can be remedied by:

chmod: "ugo=rwX"

So, if you are running rsync on Windows put this option in place.

API

rsync(options)

options
destination

Type: string, Required

The destination path. Use hostname when using a remote path.

root

Type: string, Default: process.cwd()

Specifying a root path changes the path names that are transferred to the destination. The paths piped into rsync must be within the root path (or the plugin will yell at you).

gulp.src('build/js/**']).pipe(rsync({destination: '/tmp'}));

This will create the directory build in /tmp as well as the directory js in /tmp/build.

gulp.src('build/js/**']).pipe(rsync({root: 'build', destination: '/tmp'}));

This will create the directory js in /tmp.

hostname

Type: string

The hostname of the destination. rsync will connect to this hostname using SSH along with configuration in ~/.ssh/config or SSH keys stored in a keychain.

When this is omitted, rsync will transfer the content to a local path.

username

Type: string

Used to specify a user for the remote host.

shell

Type: string, Compares to: rsync -e

Typically, rsync is configured to use ssh by default, but you may prefer to use rsh on a local network.

port

Type: integer

Used to specify an SSH port for the remote host. Note: This will override the shell option and force the use ssh in rsync -e ssh --port=PORT.

archive

Type: boolean, Default: false, Compares to: rsync -a

If set to true, rsync will turn on the archive mode which equals -rlptgoD:

-r, --recursive  recurse into directories
-l, --links      copy symlinks as symlinks
-p, --perms      preserve permissions
-t, --times      preserve modification times
-g, --group      preserve group
-o, --owner      preserve owner (super-user only)
-D               same as --devices --specials
--devices        preserve device files (super-user only)
--specials       preserve special files
dryrun

Type: boolean, Default: false, Compares to: rsync -n

If set to true, rsync will do everything it does without actually syncing.

incremental

Type: boolean, Default: false, Compares to: rsync -c

If set to true, rsync will make incremental updates only. rsync will use the checksum of every file to determine whether a file needs to be updated. This will add a delay to the transfer, but will minimize the amount of files transferred each time.

progress

Type: boolean, Default: false, Compares to: rsync --progress

If set to true, the transfer progress for each file will be displayed in the console.

This looks like:

[20:49:53] gulp-rsync: Starting rsync to example.com:/var/www/example.com/html/...
[20:49:53] gulp-rsync: favicon.ico
[20:49:53] gulp-rsync:         1150 100%  439.45kB/s    0:00:00 (xfer#1, to-check=12/13)
[20:49:53] gulp-rsync: index.html
[20:49:53] gulp-rsync:         2712 100%  101.86kB/s    0:00:00 (xfer#2, to-check=11/13)
[20:49:53] gulp-rsync: css/style.1afca52f.css
[20:49:53] gulp-rsync:         1445 100%   54.27kB/s    0:00:00 (xfer#3, to-check=9/13)
[20:49:53] gulp-rsync: images/photo1.82515393.jpg
[20:49:53] gulp-rsync:        31878 100%    1.09MB/s    0:00:00 (xfer#7, to-check=3/13)
[20:49:53] gulp-rsync: images/photo2.2a41e1e3.jpg
[20:49:53] gulp-rsync:        76988 100%    2.53MB/s    0:00:00 (xfer#9, to-check=1/13)
[20:49:53] gulp-rsync:  
[20:49:53] gulp-rsync: sent 2401 bytes  received 2820 bytes  10442.00 bytes/sec
[20:49:53] gulp-rsync: total size is 114173  speedup is 57.01
[20:49:53] gulp-rsync: Completed rsync.
relative

Type: boolean, Default: true, Compares to: rsync -R

By default, gulp-rsync will transfer all paths relative to the root specified. If you want to transfer assets from multiple paths to a single destination, you can set relative to false.

gulp.src(['build/js/**/*.js', 'build/css/**/*.css', 'build/images/**'])
  .pipe(rsync({
    hostname: 'example.cdn',
    destination: '/path/to/all/assets',
    relative: false
  }));

This will transfer all assets (*.js, *.css, and images) into a single directory.

emptyDirectories

Type: boolean, Default: false, Compares to: rsync -d

If set to true, rsync will create empty directories.

times

Type: boolean, Default: false, Compares to: rsync -t

Preserves times of the transferred files.

compress

Type: boolean, Default: false, Compares to: rsync -z

Compresses file data during transfer.

recursive

Type: boolean, Default: false

If set to true, rsync will transfer all files and subdirectories recursively. This is not necessary when using glob(s) with gulp.src(). However, it can be combined with non-globbed paths to transfer all files:

gulp.src(['build/js', 'build/css', 'build/images'])
  .pipe(rsync({
    root: 'build/',
    destination: 'tmp/',
    recursive: true
  }));

This is the same as:

gulp.src(['build/js/**', 'build/css/**', 'build/images/**'])
  .pipe(rsync({
    root: 'build',
    destination: '/tmp'
  }));

The difference is that the actual rsync command used in the first example is much shorter.

clean

Type: boolean, Default: false, Compares to: rsync --delete

This must be used with archive or recursive set to true. If set to true, this instructs rsync to delete all files and directories that are not in the source paths. Be careful with this option as it could lead to data loss.

chmod

Type: string, Compares to: rsync --chmod=STRING

Enables files or directories matching the pattern(s) provided to be excluded from the transfer. This is probably most useful when recursive is set to true since it is typically better to make these exclusions in gulp.src().

chown

Type: string, Compares to: rsync --chown=STRING

Forces all remote files to be owned by the USER:GROUP provided in the string. If GROUP is empty, the trailing colon may be omitted, but if USER is empty, a leading colon must be supplied. If you're running macOS please check your rsync version with rsync --version. The default system version, older than 3.1.0, doesn't support this option. You can fix this by installing a recent version from Brew (brew install homebrew/dupes/rsync) or MacPorts (sudo port install rsync).

exclude

Type: string|Array<string>, Compares to: rsync --exclude=PATTERN

Enables files or directories matching the pattern(s) provided to be excluded from the transfer. This is probably most useful when recursive is set to true since it is typically better to make these exclusions in gulp.src().

include

Type: string|Array<string>, rsync --include=PATTERN

Used with exclude. This adds exceptions for the exclusions.

For example:

gulp.src('build')
  .pipe(rsync({
    root: 'build',
    destination: '/tmp',
    recursive: true,
    exclude: ['*.css', '*.js'],
    include: ['*.min.css', '*.min.js']
  }));

This will transfer only minified CSS and JS files.

update

Type: boolean, Default: false, Compares to: rsync -u

Skip files that are newer on the receiving end.

silent

Type: boolean, Default: false, Compares to: rsync --no-v

Turns off logging.

links

Type: boolean, Default: false

Enables creation of symbolic links on the receiving end.

command

Type: boolean, Default: false

This is not a rsync-option. If set to true, gulp-rsync shows you the generated rsync command in your shell.

License

The MIT License (MIT)

Copyright © 2015 Jerry Su, http://jerrysu.me

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the “Software”), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED “AS IS”, WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.