I keep running into issues on windows using tools like Gulp or Grunt. The issues I'm running up against is long file names and deep node_module folders which end up causing errors like "file path too long". Also, if i end up moving or deleting one of these projects after running "npm install" the amount of time it takes is incredible due to the amount of files in the node_modules folder. I've also had to use robocopy to remove the long file names in some cases. Maybe I'm doing it all wrong...

The scenario I'm up against is that we don't use a mainstream language, so no tooling really exists. I'm trying to bolt on a solution(think asset pipeline) and seemed like Gulp would fit the bill. I'm able to get Gulp to do what I want I'm just not that pleased with the amount of steps needed to get to that point and the pain associated with moving/deleting projects.

What I'm wondering if there is a way to take your current gulp build process and convert it to a binary, or compile it to a single .js file that you could script against? Or if there are binaries out there that can do this sort of thing. My starting point with this was the gulp-webapp template.

Any ideas, thoughts, would be awesome!