Gulp with watchify/browserify runs twice then stops watching

Question

Here is my gulpfile.js

var gulp = require('gulp');
var browserify = require('browserify');
var source = require("vinyl-source-stream");
var reactify = require("reactify");
var watchify = require('watchify');
var gutil = require('gulp-util');

var paths = {
    scripts: ['src/jsx/index.jsx']
};

gulp.task('browserify', function(){


    var bundler = watchify(browserify('./src/jsx/index.jsx', watchify.args));
    bundler.transform(reactify);

    bundler.on('update', rebundle);

    function rebundle() {
        return bundler.bundle()
            // log errors if they happen
            .on('error', gutil.log.bind(gutil, 'Browserify Error'))
            .pipe(source('bundle.js'))
            .pipe(gulp.dest('./public/js'));
    }

    return rebundle();

});

gulp.task('watch', function() {
    gulp.watch(paths.scripts, ['browserify']);
});

Then my commandline output looks like this:

$ gulp watch

[15:10:41] Using gulpfile ~/blizztrack/dashboard/gulpfile.js
[15:10:41] Starting 'watch'...
[15:10:41] Finished 'watch' after 9.95 ms

save index.jsx

[15:10:45] Starting 'browserify'...
[15:10:51] Finished 'browserify' after 5.33 s

save index.jsx the second time

[15:11:08] Starting 'browserify'...
[15:11:10] Finished 'browserify' after 2.02 s

save index.jsx the third time

No output.

This seems to be doing exactly what I want it to the first two times, and then it just stops watching. Can anyone point me in the right direction?

Answer 1

Just came across this issue. After browsing the web for answers for a couple hours I tried editing the file in Notepad instead of PHPStorm IDE. It turned out that browserify/watchify continued to work via notepad.

Thats when I tried to play around with some settings. It turned out PHPStorm / System Settings / Use "safe write", if enabled, stops watchify after PHPStorm edits the file.

All the problems magically disappeared when i turned "safe write" off. I am not sure what IDE you are using, but maybe there is a "Safe Write" option too.