Very slow BrowserSync server startup with Gulp

Question

I'm using BrowserSync in server mode (using its built-in static server) with GulpJS on a local project, and everything seems to be working correctly except that the BrowserSync server is very slow to startup. BrowserSync itself seems to initialize right away when I run Gulp, but it takes about 4 to 5 minutes (and occasionally more) for the server to start and for it to return the access URLs. During this period, everything continues to run and BrowserSync responds to reload() calls and such, but access is not available via the usual URLs (in this case, localhost:3000 and localhost:3001). Once the access URLs are returned, the server has seemingly started and BrowserSync's page refreshes work fine and are actually very speedy.

I have tried several different configurations of my gulpfile.js, trying different ways to initialize BrowserSync, different approaches to calling the stream() and reload() methods (including trying BrowserSync's basic Gulp/SASS "recipe"), and different port numbers, but all configurations had the same problem. I even tried disabling my firewall and AV software (Avast), but nothing.

I'm running Windows 8.1, if that's relevant. BrowserSync is freshly installed locally to the project via NPM, and fresh local installs to other directories have the same problem. NPM, Ruby, Gulp, and all modules seem to be up-to-date. For what it's worth, all of my other experience with Ruby, Gulp, and Node.js have been very smooth and problem-free.

I can't find any other posts mentioning this problem and am beginning to think this is normal behavior. Is this normal, and, if not, does anyone have any ideas of things to try? This delay is not the end of the world since the BrowserSync server does always start (eventually), but it's still a kink in my workflow that I'd rather fix than just deal with.

Finally, here is my gulpfile.js: /* File: gulpfile.js */

var gulp  = require('gulp'),
    gutil = require('gulp-util');
    jshint = require('gulp-jshint');
    sass   = require('gulp-sass');
    concat = require('gulp-concat');
    uglify = require('gulp-uglify');
    sourcemaps = require('gulp-sourcemaps');
    imagemin = require('gulp-imagemin');
    browserSync = require('browser-sync').create();

gulp.task('default', ['watch'], browserSync.reload);

// JSHint
gulp.task('jshint', function() {
  return gulp.src('src/js/**/*.js')
    .pipe(jshint())
    .pipe(jshint.reporter('jshint-stylish'));
});

// Build JS
gulp.task('build-js', function() {
  return gulp.src('src/js/**/*.js')
    .pipe(sourcemaps.init())
      .pipe(concat('main.js'))
      //only uglify if gulp is ran with '--type production'
      .pipe(gutil.env.type === 'production' ? uglify() : gutil.noop()) 
    .pipe(sourcemaps.write())
    .pipe(gulp.dest('public/www/js/core'));
});

// Build CSS
gulp.task('build-css', function() {
    return gulp.src('src/sass/**/*.{sass,scss}')
        .pipe(sourcemaps.init())
            .pipe(sass()).on('error', handleError)
        .pipe(sourcemaps.write()) // Add the map to modified source.
        .pipe(gulp.dest('public/www/css/core'))
        .pipe(browserSync.stream({match: '**/*.css'}));
});

// ImageMin
gulp.task('imagemin', function () {
    return gulp.src('src/img/*')
        .pipe(imagemin({
            progressive: true,
            svgoPlugins: [{removeViewBox: false}]
        }))
        .pipe(gulp.dest('public/www/img'));
});

// Handle errors
function handleError(err) {
  console.log(err.toString());
  this.emit('end');
}

// Watch function
gulp.task('watch', function() {
    browserSync.init({
      server: "./public/www",
      //port: 3002
    });

    gulp.watch('src/js/**/*.js', ['jshint']);
    gulp.watch('src/sass/**/*.{sass,scss}', ['build-css']);
    gulp.watch('src/js/**/*.js', ['build-js']);
    gulp.watch('src/img/*', ['imagemin']);
    gulp.watch("public/www/css/**/*.css").on('change', browserSync.reload);
})

Answer 1

The BrowserSync Twitter account suggested that I set the "online" option to true, and...it seems to have worked!

I set it in BrowserSync's init like so:

browserSync.init({
  server: "./public/www",
  online: true
});

...and the delay is gone!

Going by the BrowserSync docs ( http://www.browsersync.io/docs/options/#option-online ), it seems that setting the online option to true skips the online check. So, I guess that check was somehow what was causing the delay? That seems odd to me, but it's working better now.

Answer 2

In my case I had this code in gulpfile which delay startup about 50 seconds

gulp.watch('./**/*.{js,html}').on('change', browserSync.reload);

and the problem was in the glob string. It inspects even node_modules folder. And I did some changes

gulp.watch(['./scripts/**/*.{js,html}', './index.html'])
  .on('change', browserSync.reload);

I think that it is performance feature, that we should more exactly specify glob.