Post-build event in VS2012 with NodeJS / GulpJS 255 code when publishing

Question

I am trying to configure event pre-assembly in visual studio 2012 to compress my Durandaljs application using Gulp. After much disappointment at the pre / post build command line, I have work if I create a project. It runs node / gulp, as expected.

Now my problem is when I open my project using the publish dialog (deployment on the Internet), the command fails with "with code 255." along with the first warning, “The server was unexpected at this time. I had trouble finding a lot of information about this combination of errors, and I don’t know what else to try.

if $(ConfigurationName) == Release ( "C:\Program Files\nodejs\node.exe" "$(ProjectDir)node_modules\gulp\bin\gulp.js" --gulpfile "$(ProjectDir)gulpfile.js" --cwd "$(SolutionDir)ProjectName" --no-color durandal ) 

Edit: I reduced the problem to the end. It has nothing to do with Gulp, rather it is something with node running from the build command line. I am running a simple helloworld.js file connected to node and this is the same behavior. It works great during assembly, but when publishing it gives the same errors.