Detect list of files used by a Wing project

[Chriscbr]

We would like to have a general way to track changes to a Wing project so that the Wing Console and other CLI commands (like wing compile --watch or wing test --watch) can detect when a Wing project has changed and needs to be refreshed. The solution should also solve the case when a user adds a new .w file into their project (i.e. uses bring on a file that hasn't been compiled before)

It's possible this could be some kind of function exposed by @winglang/compiler that lists all files in the project given an entrypoint file passed as an argument (i.e. main.w or *.main.w), or a custom watcher that takes an entrypoint and explicitly notifies (e.g. using callbacks or an EventEmitter when a file in the project has changed.

P1: detect changes whenever Wing source files have changed
P2: detect changes whenever the package.json file has changed, or when extern JS files have changed

[skyrpex]

Yes! The current watch mechanism is not optimal at all.

IMO, the compile method from libs/wingcompiler/src/compile.ts should return an object similar to

interface CompileResult {
  /** The output directory **/
  outputDir: string;
  /** The compilation dependencies (aka the files) **/
  dependencies: string[];
  // ... errors and warnings too?
}

I don't know if wingc already has a mechanism to report such data but if it can print json to stdout, we should be able to build it.

[tsuf239]

closed #3956 as a duplicate, when implementing this, please make sure that the solution also fits the case described there (creating a react website with wing file at the same directory level/ one folder down)

[Chriscbr]

(Added the console/simulator labels since not having a good watching mechanism impacts the DX of those tools)

[github-actions]

Hi,

This issue hasn't seen activity in 90 days. Therefore, we are marking this issue as stale for now. It will be closed after 7 days.
Feel free to re-open this issue when there's an update or relevant information to be added.
Thanks!

[Chriscbr]

I ran into this while working on a winglib. The scenario was I was testing out an example, and I was importing a module from a parent directory, like in the snippet below.

bring cloud;
bring "../hello.w" as hello;

new hello.Hello();

Unfortunately, when I made changes to "hello.w", the console didn't auto-update which was a bit confusing (also the "Reset" button doesn't re-compile the app so it didn't help).