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I've seen a lot of posts and publications about live reloading, hot reloading, and hot module replacement, referring to different practices to reflect changes in code immediately in the browser when working in the web client/FE layer.
I have a fair understanding of what are these terms referring to, my only question is if these concepts are properly defined somewhere and which are the specific differences between them.
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The difference between the two is, Live Reloading is gonna reload your entire application. It's just gonna be like, okay, the file changed, reload the entire app. Hot Reloading is not gonna reload your entire application. It's just going to patch the code that was changed and keep the state in your app.
Hot Module Replacement (HMR) exchanges, adds, or removes modules while an application is running, without a full reload. This can significantly speed up development in a few ways: Retain application state which is lost during a full reload.
Live reloading will reload the whole app and completely reinitialize the state. It only reloads the file that changed. It reloads the whole app.
The idea behind hot reloading is to keep the app running and to inject new versions of the files that you edited at runtime. It leverages HMR and without reloading the page, replaces changed components in-place, preserving state.
So I just came across the same question today and thought it's good to share my findings:
Live Reload - Triggers an app wide reload that listens to file changes
Hot Module Replacement - Is the same as Live Reload with the difference that it only replaces the modules that have been modified, hence the word Replacement. The advantage of this is that it doesn't lose your app state e.g. your inputs on your form fields, your currently selected tab etc. Here's a full-blown explanation from another SO answer.
Lastly, Hot Reloading is just short for Hot Module Replacement.
Here's a explanatory video which you can look at and differentiate LR from HMR.
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