Treat first build with watch as normal build

[amaimersion]

Treat first build with watch as normal build

[Amaimersion]

It really depends.

Some developers want to apply watch rules even for first build in "watch" mode, some developers as it turned out want to apply before rules for first build in "watch" mode and watch rules for subsequent "watch "builds. So, it's all really depends on programmer logic.

As for after rules, these rules will be applied for both "normal" compilation and "watch" compilation. According to the 1.4.0 documentation:

after – executes once after "normal" compilation and every time after "watch" compilation.

Anyway, you are right that webpack treats first build in "watch" mode as "normal" build, and next builds is just short rebuilds. Current watch behavior for "watch" mode: apply same rules for first build and subsequent rebuilds.

You're not the first who asks for another behavior of watch for "watch" mode: apply before rules for first builds and watch rules for subsequent rebuilds. According to "Insights > Traffic" people also google for it.

This is an obvious scenario, and i should have implemented this earlier. I will implement it in 1.4.1.

Thank you for request.

[Amaimersion]

Hello there!

I guess it is a (hacky) solution what you talking about - #22 (comment)

[ansbar]

Yes, thats the one.

Would you agree that the startup build for watch should be considered a normal build (in before/after)?

[Amaimersion]

Starting from 1.4.1 you can use such configuration:

new RemovePlugin({
    // will be applied for every "normal" build and
    // for first build of "watch" build
    before: {
        // ...
    },
    // will be applied to each "watch" build, 
    // starting from the second one
    watch: {
        // ...
        beforeForFirstBuild: true
    }
})

[Amaimersion]

I'm closing this. Feel free to reopen if you have any questions/features/bugs relative to this issue.

[ansbar]

Hi @Amaimersion thanks for the update, working as expected!

You might want to add an example to the documentation, like:

// Remove distfolder all normal builds and first watch build.
new RemovePlugin({
            before: {
                include: [
                    './Content/dist'
                ]
            },
            watch: {
                beforeForFirstBuild: true
            }
        })

[Amaimersion]

I thought about adding some example with beforeForFirstBuild in readme. However, beforeForFirstBuild looks too simple and i think parameters description is enough to document this parameter. Current examples section contains only few simple cases for demonstration and some hard cases for additional documentation. If i will add many simple cases in examples section, then examples section will become "too much" and no one will read it. So, it is the reasons why i didn't add it.