Using ECMAScript 6 (ES6/ES2015) with Gulp

Did you know that you can easily write your gulpfile in ECMAScript 6 (or ES2015, or whatever you like to call it)? There are only a few steps you need to do:

Since Babel 6:

1. Make sure you are using gulp in at least version 3.9.0:
   gulp -v to check, npm install -g gulp to update it
2. Rename your gulpfile.js to gulpfile.babel.js
3. Save babel-core (an ES6 to ES5 compiler) and it’s ES2015 preset to your project:
   npm install --save-dev babel-core babel-preset-es2015
4. Create a file called .babelrc beside your gulpfile with the following content:

   {
     "presets": ["es2015"]
   }

Prior to Babel 6:

1. Make sure you are using gulp in at least version 3.9.0:
   gulp -v to check, npm install -g gulp to update it
2. Rename your gulpfile.js to gulpfile.babel.js
3. Save babel (an ES6 to ES5 compiler) as a development dependency to your project:
   npm install --save-dev babel

Now you can use ECMAScript 6 syntax and gulp will automatically compile it with babel when you run gulp.