webpack: Watch doesn't work correctly with links

Do you want to request a feature or report a bug?

Bug

What is the current behavior?

Webpack file watcher ignores changes in symlinked files if resolve > symlinks options is set to false.

If the current behavior is a bug, please provide the steps to reproduce.

I have created a minimal reproducible repo to test the issue:

• go to ./project
• do npm ci
• then start local server by running npm run server
• start Webpack file watcher by running npm run watch
• change the file in ./package/Logger (you could try changing the message getter for example, this way the changes are easy to see)

What is the expected behavior?

The changes made in Logger module should appear on the page (e.g. Logger should append a different message). Instead Webpack doesn’t re-build the Logger module.

I found a similar issue here.

If this is a feature request, what is motivation or use case for changing the behavior?

Please mention other relevant information such as the browser version, Node.js version, webpack version, and Operating System.

Node.js version 12.19.0

Webpack version 5.10.3