webpack: Watching symlinks doesn't work in dev mode

Bug report

What is the current behavior?

Watching symlinks doesn’t work after multiple changes in development mode.

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

webpack.config.js

module.exports = {
  entry: './main.js',
  watchOptions: { followSymlinks: true, },
  mode: "development",
  output: {
    path: __dirname,
    filename: 'bundle.js',
  },
  resolve: { symlinks: false }
};

main.js

Symlink to ./data/123.js

data/123.js

console.log("A");

Run

webpack --watch

echo 'console.log("B")' > main.js
echo 'console.log("C")' > main.js

What is the expected behavior?

I expected bundle.js to contain console.log("C"), but it contained console.log("B").

Other relevant information:

webpack version: 5.65.0 Node.js version: 17.3.0 Operating System: Ubuntu 20.04 Additional tools:

Strangely, this example works fine in production mode.

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created 2 years ago
Reactions: 3
Comments: 19 (9 by maintainers)

Commits related to this issue

speed symlinks hot reload https://github.com/webpack/webpack/issues/15100 https://github.com/react-atomic/reshow/issues/70 — committed to react-atomic/reshow by HillLiu 2 years ago

Most upvoted comments

@andreialecu, your issue is not related to this one. What you are describing is actually expected and working as intended. node_modules are considered immutable and only get invalidated once the version in package manifest changes.

See https://github.com/angular/angular-cli/issues/22104 and https://github.com/angular/angular-cli/issues/20962

alan-agius4 on Jan 24, 2022

@andreialecu, your issue is not related to this one. What you are describing is actually expected and working as intended. node_modules are considered immutable and only get invalidated once the version in package manifest changes.

See angular/angular-cli#22104 and angular/angular-cli#20962

Hi @alan-agius4, I still think Angular 13, 14 does have this issue outside of node_modules and folders without a package.json inside them. We have a symlinked model folder that is shared between and Angular app and a NodeJs project. The folder is not in node_modules.

When we change a file. For example, adding a property to a class … Angular recompiles but complains that the class does not contain this new property. Killing the build and starting again resolves the issue but this is starting to become a massive drag on productivity.

Is there anyway to utilise any of the strategies above in the Angular.json or disable caching for a specific folder?

Regards, Tarek

thaoula on Jul 14, 2022

Seems maybe this is solveable within webpack. To work around the issue, @pauldraper you can set snapshot.module.hash = true. to use hash of content instead of timestamp

markjm on Jan 4, 2022