Ignore/exclude files/dirs from watch

[schickling]

It would be great if it there was a way to exclude/ignore files and/or directory when using watch: true (e.g. node_modules).

Maybe this is already possible via plugins as well?

[evanw]

This isn't possible with esbuild's built-in watch mode but it's trivial to use whatever external watch mode library you prefer instead of esbuild's built-in watch mode. Just turn off esbuild's watch mode and use incremental builds instead, then call rebuild() whenever your watch mode library detects a change.

[gustavopch]

I'd like this too. My use case is that I'm writing some stuff to the file system in onRebuild, so it triggers an extra rebuild that's not necessary:

• Build runs
• onRebuild writes a file
• Build runs again but this time unnecessarily

[evanw]

Since this issue was filed, esbuild has improved its watch mode to reduce the cases where rebuilds happen due to file system changes that are unrelated to the build: #1676. So I'm closing this issue both because you can bring your own watch mode if you choose, and because the situation has already been improved.