Gatsby: (www): Gatsby site development server does not start

[danedavid]

Description

Building Gatsby site (gatsbyjs.org) takes infinitely long (stuck at onPreBootstrap).

Steps to reproduce

I cd to gatsby/www and ran gatsby develop.
Then the terminal is stuck at step onPreBootstrap. I tried for about an hour, many times, with Node V8 as well as Node v10.

Expected result

Gatsby dev server should be up.

Actual result

Stuck.

Environment

  System:
    OS: macOS 10.14.2
    CPU: (4) x64 Intel(R) Core(TM) i5-7360U CPU @ 2.30GHz
    Shell: 5.3 - /bin/zsh
  Binaries:
    Node: 10.13.0 - /usr/local/bin/node
    Yarn: 1.12.3 - /usr/local/bin/yarn
    npm: 6.4.1 - /usr/local/bin/npm
  Languages:
    Python: 2.7.10 - /usr/bin/python
  Browsers:
    Chrome: 71.0.3578.98
    Safari: 12.0.2
  npmPackages:
    gatsby: ^2.0.57 => 2.0.91 
    gatsby-image: ^2.0.5 => 2.0.26 
    gatsby-plugin-canonical-urls: ^2.0.5 => 2.0.8 
    gatsby-plugin-catch-links: ^2.0.2 => 2.0.9 
    gatsby-plugin-emotion: ^2.0.5 => 2.0.7 
    gatsby-plugin-feed: ^2.0.5 => 2.0.11 
    gatsby-plugin-google-analytics: ^2.0.5 => 2.0.9 
    gatsby-plugin-google-tagmanager: ^2.0.5 => 2.0.7 
    gatsby-plugin-guess-js: ^1.0.0 => 1.0.3 
    gatsby-plugin-layout: ^1.0.10 => 1.0.11 
    gatsby-plugin-lodash: ^3.0.1 => 3.0.3 
    gatsby-plugin-mailchimp: ^2.2.3 => 2.2.3 
    gatsby-plugin-manifest: ^2.0.2 => 2.0.13 
    gatsby-plugin-netlify: ^2.0.0 => 2.0.6 
    gatsby-plugin-netlify-cache: ^0.1.0 => 0.1.0 
    gatsby-plugin-nprogress: ^2.0.5 => 2.0.7 
    gatsby-plugin-offline: ^2.0.19 => 2.0.21 
    gatsby-plugin-react-helmet: ^3.0.0 => 3.0.5 
    gatsby-plugin-sharp: ^2.0.5 => 2.0.17 
    gatsby-plugin-sitemap: ^2.0.1 => 2.0.4 
    gatsby-plugin-subfont: ^1.0.1 => 1.0.3 
    gatsby-plugin-twitter: ^2.0.5 => 2.0.8 
    gatsby-plugin-typography: ^2.2.0 => 2.2.5 
    gatsby-remark-autolink-headers: ^2.0.10 => 2.0.12 
    gatsby-remark-code-titles: ^1.0.2 => 1.0.2 
    gatsby-remark-copy-linked-files: ^2.0.5 => 2.0.8 
    gatsby-remark-graphviz: ^1.0.0 => 1.0.5 
    gatsby-remark-images: ^2.0.1 => 2.0.6 
    gatsby-remark-normalize-paths: ^1.0.0 => 1.0.0 
    gatsby-remark-prismjs: ^3.0.2 => 3.2.0 
    gatsby-remark-responsive-iframe: ^2.0.5 => 2.0.8 
    gatsby-remark-smartypants: ^2.0.5 => 2.0.7 
    gatsby-source-filesystem: ^2.0.1 => 2.0.16 
    gatsby-source-npm-package-search: ^2.0.0 => 2.0.2 
    gatsby-transformer-csv: ^2.0.0 => 2.0.6 
    gatsby-transformer-documentationjs: ^2.0.0 => 2.0.2 
    gatsby-transformer-remark: ^2.1.8 => 2.2.0 
    gatsby-transformer-screenshot: ^2.0.4 => 2.0.10 
    gatsby-transformer-sharp: ^2.1.1 => 2.1.10 
    gatsby-transformer-yaml: ^2.1.1 => 2.1.7 
  npmGlobalPackages:
    gatsby-cli: 2.4.8
    gatsby-dev-cli: 2.4.8

[danedavid]

Okay, the development server ran after about 1.5 hours. Does it take that long every time? Is there any way to speed up subsequent dev server starts?

[sidharthachatterjee]

Setting GATSBY_SCREENSHOT_PLACEHOLDER=true should speed things up

More details at https://github.com/gatsbyjs/gatsby/tree/master/www#running-slow-build-screenshots-placeholder

[danedavid]

Thanks for reply!
Ok, but I read in the README that if you're working on the starter or showcase (which I am) you cannot use that setting.? Isn't there any way to download the images just once and use them on subsequent restarts?

[sidharthachatterjee]

I do think subsequent restarts will be much faster since a lot in cached in the .cache directory. Are you seeing subsequent restarts take the same amount of time?

[danedavid]

Yes, it seems to download all screenshots again. Is there any config or setting I should set first?

[sidharthachatterjee]

Unfortunately, no. 🙁

There is GATSBY_SCREENSHOT_PLACEHOLDER but like you mentioned you need screenshots to be generated for what you're working on.

[danedavid]

@sidharthachatterjee Thanks a bunch! I'm closing this issue.