How to debug app startup with Gulp - node.js

Question

I have run into a road block with a new team I am working with that supports a node app. The app is launched via Gulp, and the setup is such that there is a "core" NPM module that defines a bunch of gulp tasks and a "server", and our app simply installs this package and our code is copied in as a "plugin" to the server.
In our gulpfile.js, we have something like:
var gulp = require('gulp');
var workflow = require('base-workflow');
workflow.use({ gulp: gulp });
gulp.task('default'), ['base:default']);
...more stuff
Where base:default is pulled in and a couple of Hapi servers are ultimately started (one as a "web" app, one as the "rest" proxy app to a real Java-based REST services). What I would like to do is setup node-inpector so that I can troubleshoot the startup of the app because I have found that the latest versions of their base packages are not Mac-compatible.
What I have tried is to install gulp-node-inspector with the following changes:
var gulp = require('gulp');
var nodeInspector = require('gulp-node-inspector');
var workflow = require('base-workflow');
workflow.use({ gulp: gulp });
gulp.task('default'), ['base:default']);
gulp.task('debug', ['default'], function() { gulp.src([]).pipe(nodeInspector({debugBrk: true})); });
...more stuff
and also:
var gulp = require('gulp');
var nodeInspector = require('gulp-node-inspector');
var workflow = require('base-workflow');
workflow.use({ gulp: gulp });
gulp.task('default'), ['base:default']);
gulp.task('debug', function() { gulp.src(['default']).pipe(nodeInspector({debugBrk: true})); });
...more stuff
but neither of those works. Part of this is most likely my lack of understanding of Gulp. Does anyone know how I can debug this app?

Answer 1

I spent a fair bit of time googling and trying the various solutions out there; in the end the one that worked for me was the accepted answer found on this page:
How to debug gulpfile.js
This was the only one that allowed me to actually hit my "debugger" command in my gulp task.
I should also note that I had to completely uninstall and reinstall "node-inspector"; there was a version problem and when I was on the verge of solving it I was getting some "cannot find module" error because the version of node-inspector was causing it to point to the wrong folder. Once I uninstalled and reinstalled (via npm) then it worked. In my case I'm on a Windows machine and the command that worked looked like the following:
node-debug C:\myPathWhereGulpfileDotJsExists\node_modules\gulp\bin\gulp.js --gulpfile C:\myPathWhereGulpfileDotJsExists\gulpfile.js myTestTaskContainingDebuggerCommand

Answer 2

Maby this solution help you
node --inspect --debug-brk ./node_modules/gulp fonts

Answer 3

The best way to do this now is to add a debugger; to the place in the file you would like to add a breakpoint to, or set it manually once the debugger has started with setBreakpoint('gulpFile.js', 1)
Then simply
node inspect --inspect-brk $(which gulp) taskName
c
More information about debugging with node here