Refactor: 1.4.2 and 2.0.0

[remy]

Alpha builds are available via npm install -g nodemon@dev

• Ready for merge

Follow this issue for the latest dev builds to npm and send your feedback.

Aims

• reduce the code base
• use external modules for monitoring and microtasks (like determining the user's home). Specifically thinking about chokidar (and another whose name always escapes me)
• semantic release
• fix the blasted looping problem in containers (will likely need help here, but also might just fix itself via chokidar).

Deferred

• get input from gulp + grunt 3rd party maintainers to ensure interop
• remove legacy support (for .nodemon-ignore, et al)
• modularise the exec functionality (akin to how npm handles their script commands)
• move tests to tape (my prefered dev), and ditch a lot of the monitoring tests (to defer to the 3rd party lib - which will solve a lot of the race conditions in the test)

Create 1.4.2 and 2.0 release - 2.0 will break backward compat (dropping legacy support, etc), but 1.4.x will include the infrastructure changes and stop 1.x dev there.

[remy]

Current dev build: 1.5.0-alpha1 - initial refactor across to chokidar removing custom (and god knows how many) watch methods.

[harriha]

Context: #624

Thanks @remy! Did some additional testing and it seems that, even though nodemon 1.4.1 said it's watching a gazillion of files and warning about it, it doesn't actually watch them, changes in my node_modules didn't trigger restart. Whoops, or then my setup here is somehow...off.

Anyway, this new version doesn't seem to output the number of files it's watching nor any warnings about them, but feels certainly snappier to start/restart and does what it is supposed to do, did some manual testing for the basic cases. Cannot find any issues with it, so looks good to me, should at least fix that #624 👍.

[remy]

@harriha cheers for the feedback. Yeah, the first thing nodemon loses is the actual count of files it's monitoring, but if chokidar can handle any arbitrary number of files, then it doesn't really matter (I think...).

I'm not 100% sure I've got the watch/ignore combo quite right (and I think I spotted a memory leak in alpha1 - that been fixed so I'll push another version either tonight or in the morning).

Do keep feeding back if you see anything odd.

[catamphetamine]

Ok, so, both the old nodemon and the new nodemon give me strange behaviour when files aren't being changed but it says they are:

1 Sep 04:27:31 - [nodemon] files triggering change check: code\server\libraries\json rpc.js
1 Sep 04:27:31 - [nodemon] matched rule: **\code/**/*.js
1 Sep 04:27:31 - [nodemon] changes after filters (before/after): 1/1
1 Sep 04:27:31 - [nodemon] restarting due to changes...
{ result: [ 'g:\\work\\cinema\\code\\server\\libraries\\json rpc.js' ],
  ignored: 0,
  watched: 1,
  total: 1 }
1 Sep 04:27:31 - [nodemon] code\server\libraries\json rpc.js

1 Sep 04:27:31 - [nodemon] files triggering change check: code\server\api\utility.js
1 Sep 04:27:31 - [nodemon] matched rule: **\code/**/*.js
1 Sep 04:27:31 - [nodemon] changes after filters (before/after): 1/1
1 Sep 04:27:31 - [nodemon] restarting due to changes...
{ result: [ 'g:\\work\\cinema\\code\\server\\api\\utility.js' ],
  ignored: 0,
  watched: 1,
  total: 1 }

I checked the "modified" dates on these files: those are way back in August.
But for some reason the watcher triggers.

[catamphetamine]

This thing I mentioned happens sometimes and isn't reproducible. I'll investigate on this.

[JonathanWolfe]

Maybe I missed it, but it'd be great to be able to reduce/configure the timer for modification checking. Sometimes I'll change a file and occasionally have to wait a few seconds for it to notice.

[remy]

@JonathanWolfe is this with 1.5.0-alphaX that you're seeing a few seconds latency?

Basically I've completed gutted the old watch mechanism which used find and all sorts of methods to try to work things out. Now it defers the entire process to the chokidar library.

[JonathanWolfe]

@remy it was nodemon@latest as of 5 days ago.

[remy]

@JonathanWolfe this thread is only for nodemon@dev - the aim is to fix the watch issues. Please do try out the dev build and let me know how you get on.

[thedug]

Are there any known work arounds to avoid the watch loop?

[remy]

@thedug sorry, missed your message coming in. Have you tried using the nodemon@dev version? If so, I'm hoping this is the work around...

[remy]

CC'ing @ChrisWren and @JacksonGariety to get new version of nodemon on the radar. There's going to be 2 releases:

1. a patch release that includes a refactoring and inclusion of chokidar library (effectively what you can see under [email protected] - though this will be 1.4.2 I believe).
2. a major release the removes the legacy support (for the .nodemon and .nodemon-ignore files)

I'd like to also get the event middleware included in this release (@JacksonGariety) because I know you wanted to control the flow of events from your gulp plugin.

[remy]

@ChrisWren ha, I now I read your big message in the git repo! Feel free to unsub from the issue, I understand :)

[ChrisWren]

lol, thanks @remy

[jamlfy]

Kool!!! :D

[remy]

Merged and live in [email protected]

[dlong500]

Nice! It looks like the change detection updates in v1.5 also resolved an issue (at least on Windows) where file changes triggered a restart twice.

[catamphetamine]

@remy Can you add an option in nodemon.json for usePolling: true in chokidar?
paulmillr/chokidar#348

[remy]

@halt-hammerzeit yes -> #633 (just need to find a few hours to get the code up and tests passing, I'm thinking this might just reuse the legacy flag that nodemon had before Chokidar, as it's effectively the same kind of thing).

[catamphetamine]

@remy oh, ok, that's in no way urgent for me