Build fails when favicon is missing

[calebmer]

I tried deleting the favicon.ico file after creating an app with version 0.2.0 and got this error:

Error: HtmlWebpackPlugin: could not load file favicon.ico

  - index.js:303 
    [000]/[react-scripts]/[html-webpack-plugin]/index.js:303:27

(omitted stack trace for brevity)

[gaearon]

Please see #108.
Deleting it is not currently supported.
If we add this, we will do this as part of #28 in the future.

[calebmer]

Is there a reason why you don't support the ability to delete it? From #108 the reason I saw was it made it clear where the favicon should go, but if the user makes the conscious decision to remove it that should be fine from an educational perspective?

I'd like to remove it for two reasons:

1. It's very reminiscent of a dot file given its placement at the root directory. Because I'm not a fan of including dot files/configs with no explicit purpose my first reaction is to delete it.
2. I don't appreciate the forced branding aspect. When I start work on a project I don't usually have a logo, so I can't replace the favicon.ico, but I'd still like to hide React branding from the end user. If I can't delete the favicon, the only option is to replace it which is a rabbit hole of its own.

Thanks for the project though, it's an amazing productivity boost and the constraints were very well selected. This just made me a little frustrated 😉

[gaearon]

I think the reason is explained here: #108 (comment).

We want to figure out how to make it work so that the user can add apple touch icons and other assets to HTML. Not just a favicon.

Currently favicon is treated magically. If we let you remove it, you might think it worked because it was in root directory and referenced from HTML. So you might delete it but that will be your mental model, and you might later try adding it with a few more files like apple touch icons but they won't work.

I want to make sure we have a good story about including "additional" files as part of the build. When we figure out how to do it, favicon will probably be treated just like another file, and you will be able to add and delete it at any time. Until we do, I'd like to treat it as a required file so you at least now it is handled specially—until it's not.

[calebmer]

Sounds good 👍

[MarcelMichau]

I don't know whether this is the right place to suggest this, but I've used https://github.com/jantimon/favicons-webpack-plugin for a couple of projects when needing to support multiple device icons and it worked quite nicely.

The user could then opt in to automatically generated favicons by dropping a .png into a certain folder which the Webpack config looks at.

I haven't dug into the internals of create-react-app yet, so I'm not sure whether this is viable.

P.S. Good job on create-react-app btw. :)

[calebmer]

🎉

[gaearon]

Fix is out in 0.3.0.