copy-webpack-plugin: Build enters an infinite loop

@alexander-akait Finally, I managed to fix it by adding the assets in the ignored path. At first I was trying to add the build directory to the ignored and it wasn’t working.

so at the end:

watchOptions: {
       ...,
      ignored: /node_modules|assets/,
 },

webpack.config:

plugins: [
...,
new CopyWebpackPlugin({
      patterns: [{ from: 'src/assets' }],
 }),
]

I’ve recently upgraded my webpack v4 to v5 and in consequence I had to upgrade this plugin too and after that Im getting infinite loop on dev environment after a file save. this is my configuration:

new CopyWebpackPlugin({
        patterns: [
            { from: 'src/assets' },
        ]
    });

which tries to copy all the image and svg files from the assets folder. I tried using glob but no change. also tried using ignored in the watchOptions but again no chance.

Can you please help me figure out what needs to be done in-order to fix this issue?

We have the same issue with

new CopyWebpackPlugin({
        patterns: [
            {
                from: 'static',
                to: '.' ,
                force: true,
                transform: (content, absoluteFrom) => {
			const relPath = path.relative(config.from, absoluteFrom);
			const outPath = path.normalize(path.join(config.to, relPath));

			return getContent(outPath);
		}
            },
        ]
    });

and

watchOptions: {
    ...,
    ignored: /node_modules/
}

When adding static to ignored of watchOptions like this

watchOptions: {
    ...,
    ignored: /node_modules|static/
}

it doesnt rebuild infinitely anymore but the static folder isnt watched anymore. So whenever we change something within the static folder (e.g. we have css files inside the static folder) we would have to restart the whole watch process for it to be copied over into the build directory again (which in our case is really annoying given the fact we have css files in that directory). So I dont think this is “Nice to have” but a bug that should be resolved asap.

I faced the same problem.

  watchOptions: {
    ignored: path.resolve("dist"),
  },

Helps solve the problem, but then the copy only happens on the first build

I mean, it is an acceptable working solution, but I have many files in the root directory that I would have to manually add to the ignored list and I don’t really like that, it just seems unclean. The best solution for my use case is to either have a way to tell this plugin what to add to the watch list (i.e. to not add the context directory), or to manually resolve the glob pattern beforehand inside webpack.config.js (which is what I’ll be doing).

new CopyWebpackPlugin({
    patterns: [
        ...require('glob').sync('./some-file*.txt')
    ],
});

This is definitely outside the scope of this plugin, but the cleanest solution would be a way of telling the watcher to only report changes to files that match the original glob pattern within the context directory.

That is also, in my opinion, what the user would expect. If I tell copy-wepback-plugin to copy ./some-file*.txt I would expect the plugin to tell the compiler that those files are meaningful and should be watched for changes. What I wouldn’t expect is the side effect of the compiler thinking that everything else inside ./ is also meaningful.

I understand that watching the directory is necessary, otherwise you’d miss potential new files/directories matching the glob pattern, but I think that there needs to be a way of telling the watcher/compiler that “Yes, you do need to watch the directory, but don’t forget why you are watching it: within that directory the only meaningful files that should trigger a rebuild are those that match the pattern(s)” without having to explicitly add the files that do not match the pattern(s) to the ignore list.