'gulp' is not recognized as an internal or

Question

I am trying to use Gulp and Node.Js to stream my process for minifying and concatenating CSS/JS files for production.

Here is what I have done.

1. I installed Node.Js on my Windows 7 machine.
2. Installed Gulp globally using this command npm install -g gulp
3. Then I added a new User variable called NODE_PATH set it to %AppData%\npm\node_modules

After closing and re-opening my command line, I tried to run a gulp task from the command line (i.e. gulp css). But that give me the following error

'gulp' is not recognized as an internal or external command

How can I get this to work?

When I opened the following path using the search bar in windows, %AppData%\npm\node_modules I see the following two folders

gulp
gulp-cli

I've tried to add %AppData%\npm\node_modules to the Path variable on my system variable, but it did not take it because that variable reached it's max allowed character limit.

I removed couple of paths from my Path variable and added ;C:\Users\[MyWindowsUserName]\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules

but still not working.

I even tried to set the path at run time using this command

PATH=%PATH%;C:\Users\[MyWindowsUserName]\AppData\Roaming\npm\node_modules then run gulp and still the same issues.

What am I missing here? What else do I need in order to get this to work?

Answer 1

Sorry that was a typo. You can either add node_modules to the end of your user's global path variable, or maybe check the permissions associated with that folder (node _modules). The error doesn't seem like the last case, but I've encountered problems similar to yours. I find the first solution enough for most cases. Just go to environment variables and add the path to node_modules to the last part of your user's path variable. Note I'm saying user and not system.

Just add a semicolon to the end of the variable declaration and add the static path to your node_module folder. ( Ex c:\path\to\node_module)

Alternatively you could:

In your CMD

PATH=%PATH%;C:\\path\to\node_module

EDIT

The last solution will work as long as you don't close your CMD. So, use the first solution for a permanent change.