gulp-sass

Sass plugin for Gulp.

Migrating your existing project to version 5 or 6? Please read our (short!) migration guides.

Support

Only Active LTS and Current releases are supported.

Installation

To use gulp-sass, you must install both gulp-sass itself and a Sass compiler. gulp-sass supports both Embedded Sass and Dart Sass.

Whichever compiler you choose, it's best to install these as dev dependencies:

npm install sass gulp-sass --save-dev

Importing it into your project

gulp-sass must be imported into your gulpfile, where you provide it the compiler of your choice. To use gulp-sass in a CommonJS module (which is most Node.js environments), do something like this:

const sass = require('gulp-sass')(require('sass'));

To use gulp-sass in an ECMAScript module (which is supported in newer Node.js 14 and later), do something like this:

import dartSass from 'sass';
import gulpSass from 'gulp-sass';
const sass = gulpSass(dartSass);

Usage

Note: These examples are written for CommonJS modules and assume you're using Gulp 4. For examples that work with Gulp 3, check the docs for an earlier version of gulp-sass.

gulp-sass must be used in a Gulp task. Your task can call sass() (to asynchronously render your CSS), or sass.sync() (to synchronously render your CSS). Then, export your task with the export keyword. We'll show some examples of how to do that.

⚠️ Note: When using Dart Sass, synchronous rendering is twice as fast as asynchronous rendering. The Sass team is exploring ways to improve asynchronous rendering with Dart Sass, but for now, you will get the best performance from sass.sync(). If performance is critical, you can use sass-embedded instead.

Render your CSS

To render your CSS with a build task, then watch your files for changes, you might write something like this:

'use strict';

const gulp = require('gulp');
const sass = require('gulp-sass')(require('sass'));

function buildStyles() {
  return gulp.src('./sass/**/*.scss')
    .pipe(sass().on('error', sass.logError))
    .pipe(gulp.dest('./css'));
};

exports.buildStyles = buildStyles;
exports.watch = function () {
  gulp.watch('./sass/**/*.scss', ['sass']);
};

With synchronous rendering, that Gulp task looks like this:

function buildStyles() {
  return gulp.src('./sass/**/*.scss')
    .pipe(sass.sync().on('error', sass.logError))
    .pipe(gulp.dest('./css'));
};

Render with options

To change the final output of your CSS, you can pass an options object to your renderer. gulp-sass supports Sass's JS API compile options, with a few usage notes:

• The syntax option is set to indented automatically for files with the .sass extension
• The sourceMap and sourceMapIncludeSources options are set for you when using gulp-sourcemaps

For example, to compress your CSS, you can call sass({style: 'compressed'}. In the context of a Gulp task, that looks like this:

function buildStyles() {
  return gulp.src('./sass/**/*.scss')
    .pipe(sass({style: 'compressed'}).on('error', sass.logError))
    .pipe(gulp.dest('./css'));
};

exports.buildStyles = buildStyles;

Or this for synchronous rendering:

function buildStyles() {
  return gulp.src('./sass/**/*.scss')
    .pipe(sass.sync({style: 'compressed'}).on('error', sass.logError))
    .pipe(gulp.dest('./css'));
};

exports.buildStyles = buildStyles;

Include a source map

gulp-sass can be used in tandem with gulp-sourcemaps to generate source maps for the Sass-to-CSS compilation. You will need to initialize gulp-sourcemaps before running gulp-sass, and write the source maps after.

const sourcemaps = require('gulp-sourcemaps');

function buildStyles() {
  return gulp.src('./sass/**/*.scss')
    .pipe(sourcemaps.init())
    .pipe(sass().on('error', sass.logError))
    .pipe(sourcemaps.write())
    .pipe(gulp.dest('./css'));
}

exports.buildStyles = buildStyles;

By default, gulp-sourcemaps writes the source maps inline, in the compiled CSS files. To write them to a separate file, specify a path relative to the gulp.dest() destination in the sourcemaps.write() function.

const sourcemaps = require('gulp-sourcemaps');

function buildStyles() {
  return gulp.src('./sass/**/*.scss')
    .pipe(sourcemaps.init())
    .pipe(sass().on('error', sass.logError))
    .pipe(sourcemaps.write('./maps'))
    .pipe(gulp.dest('./css'));
};

exports.buildStyles = buildStyles;

Migrating to version 6

gulp-sass version 6 uses the new compile function internally by default. If you use any options, for instance custom importers, please compare the new options with the legacy options in order to migrate. For instance, the outputStyle option is now called style.

  function buildStyles() {
    return gulp.src('./sass/**/*.scss')
-     .pipe(sass({outputStyle: 'compressed'}).on('error', sass.logError))
+     .pipe(sass({style: 'compressed'}).on('error', sass.logError))
      .pipe(gulp.dest('./css'));
  };

Setting a Sass compiler

As of version 5, gulp-sass does not include a default Sass compiler, so you must install one (either sass, sass-embedded, or node-sass) along with gulp-sass.

npm install sass gulp-sass --save-dev

Then, you must explicitly set that compiler in your gulpfile. Instead of setting a compiler prop on the gulp-sass instance, you pass the compiler into a function call when instantiating gulp-sass.

These changes look something like this:

- const sass = require('gulp-sass'));
- const compiler = require('sass');
- sass.compiler = compiler;
+ const sass = require('gulp-sass')(require('sass'));

If you're migrating an ECMAScript module, that'll look something like this:

import dartSass from 'sass';
- import sass from 'gulp-sass';
- sass.compiler = dartSass;

import dartSass from 'sass';
+ import gulpSass from 'gulp-sass';
+ const sass = gulpSass(dartSass);

Issues

gulp-sass is a light-weight wrapper around Dart Sass (which in turn is a Node.js binding for LibSass. Because of this, the issue you're having likely isn't a gulp-sass issue, but an issue with one those projects or with Sass as a whole.

If you have a feature request/question about how Sass works/concerns on how your Sass gets compiled/errors in your compiling, it's likely a Dart Sass or LibSass issue and you should file your issue with one of those projects.

If you're having problems with the options you're passing in, it's likely a Dart Sass or Node Sass issue and you should file your issue with one of those projects.

We may, in the course of resolving issues, direct you to one of these other projects. If we do so, please follow up by searching that project's issue queue (both open and closed) for your problem and, if it doesn't exist, filing an issue with them.