webpack/webpack-cli

Cannot disable --watch mode

waweber opened this issue · 5 comments

waweber commented

Bug report

Actual Behavior

It doesn't seem to be possible to disable --watch mode when running webpack serve:

  • setting watch: false in webpack config does not disable --watch behavior
  • setting devServer.watchFiles config to {} or [] does not stop recompilation
  • setting devServer.watchFiles.paths to [] or ["asdf"] does not stop recompilation
  • running webpack serve --watch-files-reset does not stop recompilation
  • running webpack serve --watch-files-reset --watch-files asdf does not stop recompilation

This makes it very tedious to test PWA/service workers e.g. when using Workbox, as the service worker's pre-cache manifest will be incorrect after recompilation.

Expected Behavior

Webpack should not notice changes to files or recompile any bundles, or ideally accept some sort of --no-watch parameter.

How Do We Reproduce?

Take an example project and attempt any of the configuration settings above, then edit some files.

Please paste the results of npx webpack-cli info here, and mention other relevant information

  System:
    OS: Linux 5.15 Fedora Linux 35 (KDE Plasma)
    CPU: (8) x64 AMD Ryzen 5 1500X Quad-Core Processor
    Memory: 7.91 GB / 15.61 GB
  Binaries:
    Node: 16.13.2 - /usr/bin/node
    npm: 8.1.2 - /usr/bin/npm
  Browsers:
    Chrome: 97.0.4692.99
    Firefox: 96.0
  Packages:
    babel-loader: ^8.2.3 => 8.2.3 
    css-loader: ^6.5.1 => 6.5.1 
    html-webpack-plugin: ^5.5.0 => 5.5.0 
    svgo-loader: ^3.0.0 => 3.0.0 
    webpack: ^5.68.0 => 5.68.0 
    webpack-cli: ^4.9.2 => 4.9.2 
    webpack-dev-server: ^4.7.3 => 4.7.3 
    workbox-webpack-plugin: ^6.4.2 => 6.4.2
snitin315 commented

--no-watch already exists.

waweber commented

@snitin315 for webpack itself, yes, but dev-server does not seem to accept/forward the setting:

$ npx webpack serve --no-watch
[webpack-cli] Error: Unknown option '--no-watch'
snitin315 commented

Issue in webpack-cli

  • 👍1
snitin315 commented

It seems this is intentional because webpack-dev-server will always watch for files.

webpack-cli/packages/serve/src/index.ts

Lines 73 to 77 in 2ca104f

const builtInOptions = cli.getBuiltInOptions().filter(
// eslint-disable-next-line @typescript-eslint/no-explicit-any
(option: any) => option.name !== "watch",
);

alexander-akait commented

Yes, --watch and --no-watch is not supported for dev server, dev server always watches files