How to watch certain node_modules changes with webpack-dev-server

Question

I'm currently experimenting with a monorepo architecture.

What I would like to do is in my web package where I run webpack dev server I'd like it to watch certain node_modules (symlinked local packages) for changes and trigger a "rebuild".

This way I'd be able to build dependencies separately and my browser would react to those changes.

My webpack config is the following:

var loaders = require('./../../../build/loaders-default'); var HtmlWebpackPlugin = require('html-webpack-plugin'); var path = require('path'); var webpack = require('webpack');  module.exports = {     entry: ['./src/index.ts'],     output: {         filename: 'build.js',         path: path.join(__dirname, 'dist')     },     resolve: {         extensions: ['.ts', '.js', '.json']     },     resolveLoader: {         modules: ['node_modules']     },     devtool: 'inline-source-map',     devServer: {         proxy: [             {                 context: ['/api-v1/**', '/api-v2/**'],                 target: 'https://other-server.example.com',                 secure: false             }         ]     },     plugins: [         new HtmlWebpackPlugin({             template: './src/index.html',             inject: 'body',             hash: true         }),         new webpack.ProvidePlugin({             $: 'jquery',             jQuery: 'jquery',             'window.jQuery': 'jquery',             'window.jquery': 'jquery'         })     ],     module:{         loaders: loaders     } }; 

Loaders are just the usual stuff included.

Answer 1

You can config in in webpack.config file or in WebpackDevServer option, to watch for changes also in node_modules (i think that by default webpack watching for changes in all files)

https://webpack.js.org/configuration/watch/#watchoptions-ignored

in the following example webpack ignored all changes in node_modules folder except specific module.

watchOptions: {   ignored: [     /node_modules([\\]+|\/)+(?!some_npm_module_name)/,      /\some_npm_module_name([\\]+|\/)node_modules/   ] } 

ignored[0] = Regex to ignore all node_modules that not started with some_npm_module_name

ignored[1] = Regex to ignore all node_modules inside some_npm_module_name

You may also used this link npm linked modules don’t find their dependencies