How to disable hot module replacement in webpack for production

Question

How does one remove all references of HMR when bundling for production?

My production Webpack config has no references to HMR and yet in the browser debugger the client is constantly making a xhr call to /__webpack_hmr

Can anyone shed a light on this?

-- my config

var path = require('path');
var webpack = require('webpack');

module.exports = {
entry: [
      path.resolve(__dirname, 'master/jsx/App')
    ],
    output: {
        path: path.resolve(__dirname, 'build'),
        publicPath: '/dist/',
        filename: 'app.bundle.js'
    },
    cache: false,
    devtool: 'sourcemap',
    resolve: {
        extensions: ['', '.js', '.jsx']
    },
    plugins: [
        new webpack.optimize.OccurenceOrderPlugin(),
        new webpack.DefinePlugin({
            'process.env.NODE_ENV': '"production"'
        }),
        new webpack.optimize.UglifyJsPlugin({
            compressor: {
                warnings: false
            }
        })
    ],
    module: {
        loaders: [{
            test: /\.jsx?$/,
            exclude: /node_modules/
        }, {
            test: /\.jsx?$/,
            exclude: /node_modules/,
            loader: 'babel',
            query: {
                presets: ['es2015', 'react'],
                compact: false
            }
        }, {
            test: /\.css$/,
            loader: "style-loader!css-loader"
        }, {
            test: /\.woff|\.woff2|\.svg|.eot|\.ttf/,
            loader: 'url?prefix=font/&limit=10000'
        }]
    }
};

Answer 1

Depends on how you setup your config. I have a node environment variable that tells me if i'm running in production mode or not. If it isn't production, I setup webpackDevMiddleware with the following in my server.js.

if (process.env.NODE_ENV !== 'production') {
    app.use(connectLiveReload());
    let config = require('./webpack.config'),
        compiler = webpack(config);

    app.use(webpackDevMiddleware(compiler, {
        noInfo:     true,
        publicPath: config.output.publicPath
    }));

    app.use(webpackHotMiddleware(compiler));
}

Answer 2

In addition, you might want to control the middleware client on the front end from firing calls:

entry: [
    'webpack-hot-middleware/client',
    './src/index'
]

by controlling that input using process.env.NODE_ENV !== 'production' in the webpack.config.js.

Refer to running webpack in production.