unplugin watch

[edemaine]

The esbuild unplugin doesn't currently work with watch. I believe we need to return watchFiles.

Progress so far:

• Rollup
• Webpack
• Vite build mode
• Vite dev mode
• esbuild (waiting on feat: esbuild support for addWatchFile and getWatchFiles unjs/unplugin#345)

[STRd6]

This probably requires a PR to https://github.com/unjs/unplugin/

https://github.com/unjs/unplugin/blob/39c0b22a30bdd7112962e377c39d2a24dcbc5847/src/esbuild/index.ts#L64 is setting the namespace to the plugin name and not file which is required by esbuild to watch paths.

https://esbuild.github.io/plugins/#on-resolve-results

[STRd6]

Additionally there is currently no way in unplugin to pass through watchFiles or watchDirs.

[edemaine]

unplugin claims support for this.addWatchFile but not yet for esbuild. Maybe we can easily add it (via a PR to unplugin) by storing them in an array and returning it from getWatchFiles.

[edemaine]

By the way, we could more easily fix this in esbuild-plugin. Or does it already support "watch"?

[STRd6]

Watch works in esbuild-plugin but it has some other bugs (something with sourcemaps, and #750). We may be able to update it to be at parity and it would help us understand the build process better as well.

[STRd6]

I think the core unplugin issue is that it sets namespace to be the name of the plugin instead of file which causes the files to not be visible to watch.

[edemaine]

I'm not sure removing the namespace setting from unplugin would fix the problem, because our resolveId callback (onResolve in esbuild terminology) adds a .tsx or .jsx extension to the filename, so it will no longer be a valid filename. (I assume this means watch is broken in all systems? Also it maybe explains the choice of namespace.) I'm hoping implementing and calling addWatchFile might be a better universal solution for all build systems.

[edemaine]

Update: #780 fixed watch mode on Rollup and Webpack. esbuild is waiting on unjs/unplugin#345 gets merged. Vite still isn't working (on Windows or Linux).

[edemaine]

Vite dev mode was fixed by #860, and esbuild was fixed by #895. 0.6.61 should have a fully working watch mode!