Ionic CLI: [ERROR] Gulpfile (or dependent module) not found: .\gulpfile.js

Senario

I recently upon running an Ionic 3 app, updated (well accidentally) the Ionic CLI version. Now upon running the build from command line, it produces the following error every time and halts the build:

In the error message it says to disable the gulp integration by running the command ionic config set gulp.enabled false which I did. But still getting the same error. I also tried to add the command to the start script of package.json to no avail (not needed though since it seems the config is set globally).

Any help would be appreciated.

Ionic CLI version: 3.9.2

Finally figured out what the problem was. Even if Gulp integration has been disabled with the command ionic config set gulp.enabled false, as long as Gulp is a Dev dependency (i.e. there is a reference to it in the package.json under devDependencies) the Ionic CLI would (well, logically) assume that the Ionic project has a dependency on Gulp, therefore would throw the error (see original post).

Solution

The solution for a case where you don't want Gulp integration, apart from disabling it by running the command ionic config set gulp.enabled false, is to also make sure Gulp is NOT under the devDependencies in the package.json file.

Hope this helps anyone else with a similar issue.

NOTE: Not sure from which version onwards Ionic requires integration with Cordova and Gulp in the shape of ionic.config.json file. Anyway, the above solution will be relevant for a similar case in any of those versions.