Gulp error handler in browser thingy

[yocontra]

After the new task system comes out, it would be cool to have a chrome extension (or use devtools somehow) that shows errors from gulp in the browser so you don't have to keep switching back and forth between the terminal and your app.

Suggested by @distracteddev

This would be in its own repo, just putting it here for brainstorming purposes

[distracteddev]

I actually just made #366 as I am very interesting in helping move Gulp forward. I will start looking into it immediately and report my progress here.

[yocontra]

@distracteddev Anything that allows you to put arbitrary CSS/HTML on a page would be all that's needed on the browser end. The node library would just take an arbitrary Error object, form up the CSS/HTML, and shoot it over to the extension.

[sindresorhus]

DevTools extension?

[tomasdev]

Do you guys think hooking up to livereload is way too hacky? We could send some new css including something like :after { content: "error message"; }

[distracteddev]

Not sure how to exactly approach this. Originally I was thinking I would just write a small Chrome Extension but then we would be alienating FF users.

Therefore I was looking into http://crossrider.com/

[yocontra]

@distracteddev Just do a chrome extension first and somebody who uses FF can add one later?

@sindresorhus Do you have any docs that would help for doing this as a devtools extension vs. a chrome extension?

[sindresorhus]

http://developer.chrome.com/extensions/devtools

There's a DevTools extension for grunt: https://github.com/vladikoff/grunt-devtools

[yocontra]

Anyone interested in developing this?

[kenwheeler]

I might take a crack at it. I developed something similiar for backend log errors on an enterprise ecomm platform using sockets and chrome notifications.

[ericclemmons]

@tomasdev I like you're idea :)

[tomasdev]

@contra what would be the requirements/acceptance criteria?

[yocontra]

@tomasdev Text from process.stderr somehow ends up in the browser and looks nice. You could listen to gulp.on('task_err') but some stuff that isn't gulp plugins or gulp tasks will be outputting on stderr, so that seems like a better approach IMO

[tomasdev]

@contra any kind of implementation? I've seen sass doing the body:after trick to show up the errors. Did we decide if it's gonna be an extension? Seems like @kenwheeler is already into something. 😃

[yocontra]

@tomasev I think an extension makes the most sense, not everyone is using livereload. Implementation could follow what grunt-devtools (linked above) did for reference

[yocontra]

Hmm wait a second

https://github.com/niki4810/gulp-devtools

@niki4810 is this functioning?

[niki4810]

@contra Yes, are you hitting any issues ?

[yocontra]

@niki4810 When an error happens in a task does it display a pop-up or only if you have the console open? How hard would it be to add a popup to the page with the error?

[phated]

I don't agree with altering the page. Also, (as far as I am aware) devtools addons don't have access to the page contents. Beefy does this by serving up an error page with the stack trace if an error occurs in the bundler.

[niki4810]

@contra right now it just logs the error to console, but adding one should take much time based on what gets decided here :)

[danielhusar]

If by popup you mean alert I don't think so its a good idea either, because it bring focus to window.

[yocontra]

@danielhusar No I don't mean an alert

[torifat]

@contra HTML5 Push Notification would be cool IMO. Though I would prefer it as a option.

[thasmo]

@contra, what about using something like gulp-notify?

[phated]

Going to close this, as there are a few user-land tools people can use