Create-react-app: Force page reload in Development when external files have changed

[nuthinking]

I was wondering if there was a way to watch some local folders and force _webpackHotDevClient_ to reload the page if a change happens. Either in _default_ mode or _ejected_ one. Thanks!

[Timer]

I agree this could be a useful feature, but how do we decide what to watch for changes? We'd want it to be configuration-less.

As for your local setup, you could put the npm run start behind nodemon and have it reboot the dev server for you on your specified changes. I believe it wouldn't require a manual page reload after if you're on OS X / Chrome.
This doesn't accomplish what you'd like, but will simulate it pretty well.

[gaearon]

Can you clarify the use case? If something's in your dependency chain then refresh should already happen.

[nuthinking]

To be honest, I didn't think it will be a useful feature to be implemented in the library. I am just trying to find a solution to my specific problem. Putting the npm start behind nodemon, as suggested, seems to be a plausible solution. Will test later, thanks a lot!

[Timer]

I believe his use case, or at least what I assumed it to be, was for when the public/ folder changed. e.g. changing index.html, or anything in relation to https://github.com/facebookincubator/create-react-app/blob/master/packages/react-scripts/template/README.md#when-to-use-the-public-folder.

[gaearon]

Ideally I’d like if we could do this automatically, but not sure how easy (or efficient) that would be.

[Timer]

I believe we could use chokidar to watch the public/ directory and tell our dev-server to reboot. I don't believe there'd be a large performance implication (no different than webpack currently watching files).

[gaearon]

Maybe related: https://github.com/facebookincubator/create-react-app/issues/656.

[SpaceK33z]

webpack-dev-server has built-in support for reloading files in the contentBase. Enable with watchContentBase: true in devServer object (see docs). Maybe you guys could use that? That feature is still a bit experimental, but it _should_ work (famous last words).

[gaearon]

Oh that's awesome. Is it new to Webpack 2?

[SpaceK33z]

@gaearon jup! Let me know if the feature doesn't fit your needs, perhaps we can improve the feature a bit on the dev-server side.

[gaearon]

Cool, that should be an easy PR.

[SpaceK33z]

Done! See #1546. Now that CRA has moved to webpack2 I will be using a forked version of create-react-app in our new company projects :).

[gaearon]

Awesome 😄
I suspect it will take a little bit before we can cut 0.10 as we want to make a few more large changes at the same time, but we’ll likely cut an alpha soon.

[gaearon]

Please help beta test the new version that includes this change!
https://github.com/facebookincubator/create-react-app/issues/2172