Wp-calypso: Build: File watch fails under Windows 10 Ubuntu Bash

[Viper007Bond]

For fun I thought I'd try building Calypso under Bash on Ubuntu on Windows. For those that are unaware, these are the exact same user-mode binaries from Ubuntu just running in Windows. It's not a VM or anything. Super cool. :)

viper007bond@VIPER007BOND:~$ lsb_release -a
No LSB modules are available.
Distributor ID: Ubuntu
Description:    Ubuntu 14.04.5 LTS
Release:        14.04
Codename:       trusty

That means that everything works* magically and I can check out a copy of Calypso directly to my "mounted" Windows filesystem:

viper007bond@VIPER007BOND:/mnt/c/Work$ git clone https://github.com/Automattic/wp-calypso.git
Cloning into 'wp-calypso'...
remote: Counting objects: 107626, done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (246/246), done.
remote: Total 107626 (delta 127), reused 6 (delta 6), pack-reused 107368
Receiving objects: 100% (107626/107626), 28.79 MiB | 5.88 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (72384/72384), done.
Checking connectivity... done.
Checking out files: 100% (4082/4082), done.
viper007bond@VIPER007BOND:/mnt/c/Work$ cd wp-calypso
viper007bond@VIPER007BOND:/mnt/c/Work/wp-calypso$ make run
             _
    ___ __ _| |_   _ _ __  ___  ___
   / __/ _` | | | | | '_ \/ __|/ _ \
  | (_| (_| | | |_| | |_) \__ \ (_) |
   \___\__,_|_|\__, | .__/|___/\___/
               |___/|_|

Unfortunately it seems the file watcher doesn't want to play nice:

npm WARN optional Skipping failed optional dependency /chokidar/fsevents:
npm WARN notsup Not compatible with your operating system or architecture: [email protected]
Hash: 4f7fd3ab7e2d10f4b1cf
Version: webpack 1.13.1
Time: 10881ms
                    Asset     Size  Chunks             Chunk Names
    bundle-development.js  2.27 MB       0  [emitted]  main
bundle-development.js.map  2.92 MB       0  [emitted]  main
    + 995 hidden modules
Rendering Complete, saving .css file...
Wrote CSS to /mnt/c/Work/wp-calypso/public/style.css
Saving: /mnt/c/Work/wp-calypso/public/style-rtl.css
Rendering Complete, saving .css file...
Wrote CSS to /mnt/c/Work/wp-calypso/public/style-debug.css
Wrote Source Map to /mnt/c/Work/wp-calypso/public/style-debug.css.map
Rendering Complete, saving .css file...
Wrote CSS to /mnt/c/Work/wp-calypso/public/editor.css
wp-calypso booted in 1185ms - http://calypso.localhost:3000

Getting bundles ready, hold on...
Error: watch assets/stylesheets EPERM
    at exports._errnoException (util.js:1036:11)
    at FSWatcher.start (fs.js:1429:19)
    at Object.fs.watch (fs.js:1456:11)
    at createFsWatchInstance (/mnt/c/Work/wp-calypso/node_modules/chokidar/lib/nodefs-handler.js:37:15)
    at setFsWatchListener (/mnt/c/Work/wp-calypso/node_modules/chokidar/lib/nodefs-handler.js:80:15)
    at FSWatcher.NodeFsHandler._watchWithNodeFs (/mnt/c/Work/wp-calypso/node_modules/chokidar/lib/nodefs-handler.js:228:14)
    at FSWatcher.NodeFsHandler._handleDir (/mnt/c/Work/wp-calypso/node_modules/chokidar/lib/nodefs-handler.js:407:19)
    at FSWatcher.<anonymous> (/mnt/c/Work/wp-calypso/node_modules/chokidar/lib/nodefs-handler.js:455:19)
    at FSWatcher.<anonymous> (/mnt/c/Work/wp-calypso/node_modules/chokidar/lib/nodefs-handler.js:460:16)
    at FSReqWrap.oncomplete (fs.js:123:15)
make: *** [run] Error 1

I also tried it just within /home/viper007bond/ which is mapped to a directory buried in my Windows user directory but that doesn't work either.

Anyone have any ideas here?

[aladwig06]

I'm having the exact same issue. It is an issue with Bash on Windows. You can read about it here: https://github.com/Microsoft/BashOnWindows/issues/216

Unfortunately, it looks like we will have to wait on a Windows update for this to be resolved. There doesn't appear to be a workaround.

[Rup1]

Hello, curious passerby here, but file watchers should now work in the latest insider preview build. https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/commandline/2016/10/07/wsl-adds-inotify-filesystem-change-notification-support/ Also @Viper007Bond doesn't

npm WARN optional Skipping failed optional dependency /chokidar/fsevents:
npm WARN notsup Not compatible with your operating system or architecture: [email protected]
Hash: 4f7fd3ab7e2d10f4b1cf
Version: webpack 1.13.1
Time: 10881ms

doom the entire build since fsevents is for macOS only? I was hoping to run wp-calypso on my local windows 10 machine but now that I see that error it doesn't seem like it would work.

[Viper007Bond]

Hopefully fsevents works with the latest Insider Preview build, but if it doesn't then yeah, I think we would need some type of rebuild command that would trigger it manually after changing a file, which would suck but at least it'd work. Not my area of expertise though, just one of the very rare Windows users at @Automattic who previously played with Calypso via Vagrant.

[stale[bot]]

This issue has been marked as stale because it hasn't been updated in a while. It will be closed in a week.
If you would like it to remain open, can you please you comment below and see what you can do to get things moving with this issue?
Thanks! 🙏

[Viper007Bond]

Works great now. 👍

[khelmrab]

hello @Viper007Bond
do you add modification ?

[Viper007Bond]

fsevents still doesn't work because it's for OS X only, not Linux or Windows. However unlike when I opened this ticket, the lack of fsevents no longer breaks the build process and I can successfully run Calypso under WSL.

It's also worth mentioning that I'm running Node 8.9.3 and npm 5.5.1 as described in package.json thanks to https://github.com/creationix/nvm.