CommonJS module load hook that restarts or does Webpack-style hot module replacement when a file is changed
nodemon and piping are great, but each has their limitations:
nodemon sometimes restarts when you change files the server isn't using, which is a hassle when you're working on
isomorphic apps and just want a webpack hot update on the client.
piping is difficult to use with node-inspector because it runs a cluster; the supervisor process gets debug port 5858,
and your app process gets something else. It's even more of a pain to use with --debug-brk because the supervisor
process starts with a breakpoint as well, so you have to open node-inspector for it, resume it, then open
node-inspector for your actual app.
On top of that, neither supports any hot module replacement, which is the only way to react to changes quickly in a large project.
smart-restart combines both approaches: it uses piping's require hook to only watch files that have been required,
but it spawns your app instead of running a cluster, so that you can pass --debug or --debug-brk to your app.
And it provides a basic version of Webpack's hot module replacement API for Node CommonJS, without using Webpack or
doing any bundling.
To run ./src/index.js in a child process and watch files it requires:
var launch = require('smart-restart')
launch({
main: './src/index.js', // path to your script
command: 'node', // optional, the command to `spawn` (default: `process.argv[0]`)
commandOptions: ['--inspect'], // optional, arguments that come before `main`
args: [...], // optional, arguments that come after `main`
spawnOptions: {...}, // optional, options for `spawn`
onChildSpawned: child => {}, // optional, callback to receive ChildProcess instance
ignore: /(\/\.|~$)/, // optional, ignore pattern for `chokidar` (default: /(\/\.|~$)/)
usePolling: false, // optional, whether to use polling in `chokidar` (default: false)
interval: 100, // optional, polling interval for `chokidar` (default: 100)
binaryInterval: 300, // optional, binary polling interval for `chokidar` (default: 300)
includeModules: false, // optional, whether to include `node_modules` (default: false)
killSignal: 'SIGTERM', // optional, signal to kill process with when restarting
killTimeout: 5000, // optional, max amount of milliseconds to wait for process to get killed (default: 10000)
deleteRequireCache: [ // optional, when any files in this array (or files they require)
// are changed, all of these files will be deleted from `require.cache`
// instead of restarting the process.
'src/server/ssr/serverSideRender.js',
],
restartOnError: true, // optional, restart when child process has an uncaught error/promise rejection (default: true)
restartOnExit: true, // optional, restart when child process exits (default: true)
})You can launch as many other processes as you want in the same supervisor process.
smart-restart supports the following subset of Webpack's hot module replacement API:
if (module.hot) {
module.hot.accept('./myModule', () => {
const newVersion = require('./myModule')
// do something with newVersion
})
}Webpack's other overloads for module.hot.accept aren't supported.
If not all ancestors of a changed module have module.hot.accept hooks, then smart-restart will
relaunch the whole process.
You can process.send({exit: <code>}) to tell smart-restart to exit
immediately instead of waiting to relaunch your process.
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