Webpack-dev-server: "Error: Watching remote files is not supported" on windows with latest

[docteurzoidberg]

• Operating System: Windows 10
• Node Version: 10.16.1
• NPM Version: 6.10.3
• webpack Version: 4+
• webpack-dev-server Version: 3.8.0

• Browser: none

• [x] This is a bug

• [ ] This is a modification request

Expected Behavior

'npm run serve' should work like always

Actual Behavior

'npm run serve' give me an "Error: Watching remote files is not supported.".
-> I cannot build / run anything with the dev-server

For Bugs; How can we reproduce the behavior?

Running 'npm run serve' on any vue-cli boilerplate webapp

[alexander-akait]

Looks you try to watch remove files

Running 'npm run serve' on any vue-cli boilerplate webapp

Sorry, i can't reproduce nothing, please create minimum reproducible test repo or provide your configuration

[docteurzoidberg]

https://github.com/vuejs/vue-cli/issues/4424

[alexander-akait]

@docteurzoidberg still no configuration

[docteurzoidberg]

@evilebottnawi i haven't any, it's the default vue-cli project !

[docteurzoidberg]

@evilebottnawi > I found the bug; it's because of the pwd of my project: "c:\dev\test-broken"
It doesn't work on windows when parent dir is named DEV xD
I moved it elsewhere and now it works flawlessly, in another folder....

[alexander-akait]

need investigate, maybe wrong regexp

[alexander-akait]

Thanks for more information which can help us

[docteurzoidberg]

https://i.imgur.com/etToqUI.png not working in c:\dev\test-broken
https://i.imgur.com/v41DGQP.png working in c:\users\drzoid\test-broken

Same project, working in any other folder with no "dev" parent folder

[alexander-akait]

@docteurzoidberg can you provide you project, or minimum reproducible test repo, it can help fix problem fast, thanks

[docteurzoidberg]

sorry, i don't have git to publish the repo on windows, i'm at camping right now. i will can do it next week.

The project is done with vue-cli ("npm install vue-cli -g"), then "vue init test-broken"

[alexander-akait]

@docteurzoidberg no additional configurations?

[docteurzoidberg]

@docteurzoidberg no additional configurations?

absolutly not, i was testing, all default settings from sample project

[alexander-akait]

Thanks, we will look on this in near future

[docteurzoidberg]

seems to depend entierly on path
some fails, some others don"t....
https://i.imgur.com/oQpvSuK.png

[n0code]

I think this issue about webpack-dev-server

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/57449355/how-to-fix-error-watching-remote-files-is-not-supported-problem-in-visual-stu

[hiroppy]

I cannot reproduce this issue using MacOS. maybe only Windows.
I think a related pr is https://github.com/webpack/webpack-dev-server/pull/1980.
vue-cli is here.

In addition, We checked an URL strictly from this pr, so we might be better to revert it.

[wjw99830]

webpack-dev-server/lib/Server.js:

if (isAbsoluteUrl(String(contentBase)) || typeof contentBase === 'number') {
  throw new Error('Watching remote files is not supported.');
}

Here the contentBase is default value(process.cwd()) which is absolute url, so you should specified a relative path in vue.config.js or webpack.config.js:

devServer: {
    contentBase: './public'
}

This bug may reproduce in [email protected]

[alexander-akait]

I think it is regression, we need fix it, PR, welcome, it is easy

[sodatea]

My reply in the Vue CLI issue thread:

False-positive in https://github.com/sindresorhus/is-absolute-url (webpack-dev-server changed from testing /https?:/ to using this library in the 3.8 release)

Please report to that repository.

I believe it's because of the lower case c. But how come the lower case volume label? I thought it would always be UPPER CASE.

[alexander-akait]

@sodatea thanks for investigate, what is the contentBase value you have? Just for infromation

[sodatea]

@evilebottnawi In Vue CLI it's set to the user's public folder path, and it's an absolute path.

[alexander-akait]

@sodatea i know, just want to see you contentBase

[sodatea]

@evilebottnawi 😂I've never encountered such issues. I was just investigating based on the information @docteurzoidberg provided.

[mnlj]

Came across the same issue, when running fresh new project from c:\work\project it fails, when it's from C:\work\project it works. I believe webpack-dev-server already had similar Windows path case-sensitivity issue last year.

[alexander-akait]

@mnlj Yes, we had such a problem for a long time, before we check on absolute url only when you use contentBase as string, in [email protected] we start to check when you use array, so problem appears

[docteurzoidberg]

Came across the same issue, when running fresh new project from c:\work\project it fails, when it's from C:\work\project it works. I believe webpack-dev-server already had similar Windows path case-sensitivity issue last year.

it definitely has since i got similar result to my error message on stackoverflow and i saw people having problem on older versions in webpack 3

[alexander-akait]

Anyway PR welcome :+1:

[viruscamp]

I found VS-Code debug launcher in windows may start node.exe with cwd like 'c:\work', and cause this issue.
To reproduce the issue, create the file below, and run it with node.
node start-test.js

require('child_process').execSync('npm run serve', {
  cwd: 'c:\\work\\project\\',
  stdio: ['inherit', 'inherit', 'inherit']
})

[alexander-akait]

Should be solved, just update deps