Sources with type "dev" are not being compiled and are skipped.

[Yummy-sk]

I noticed that sources with the type "dev" are not being compiled and are being skipped in the get_source_files function. ( packages.rs#L451 )

Is there a reason for skipping the dev sources?

[CarlOlson]

Is this something that is being worked or would a PR be accepted? Any info on blockers would be nice. Without this I don't think most people will be able to use rewatch.

[rolandpeelen]

A PR would be super helpful here @Yummy-sk / @CarlOlson - I remember me and @jfrolich having a discussion about this at some point but I can't recall exactly why we skipped them. Perhaps enabling them 'just works ™'

[rolandpeelen]

Ok - so the reason we don't do this, is that for packages that get installed through node_modules, we sometimes don't find the folder. AKA - it's not in the files section of the package.json when being shipped.

Key example being the test folder of rescript-core - it's not in the corresponding package.json.

What we can do - and what we've done in the past, is just swallow the error, which I think could work here. We can just try to read the folder and compile.
However - this does come at a speed penalty as we're potentially building dev dependencies by third-parties. @jfrolich - IIRC, we currently don't distinguish between direct or transient dependencies, right? So there isn't currently a way of knowing wether the project should compile with dev or not.

Perhaps we should have a --debug and --release mode like Rust has? Where we compile the dev dependencies, unless we're building with --release mode?

[nojaf]

I believe I'm hitting this as well in https://github.com/rescript-lang/experimental-rescript-webapi
I don't think new tests/*.res (or changes) are picked up.

rescript.json snippet:

  "sources": [
    {
      "dir": "src",
      "subdirs": true
    },
    {
      "dir": "tests",
      "subdirs": true,
      "type": "dev"
    }
  ],

When users install my package the folder will indeed not be there.
But when I work on the project, it should compile these files.

[reebalazs]

Hi, is there any progress on this issue?

This is kind of annoying, as the biggest advantage of rewatch is in development mode, and the tests should be compiled if we do development.

Or maybe there is some solution for this that I'm missing?

[rolandpeelen]

@reebalazs -- Can you try @rolandpeelen/rewatch@dev and add run rewatch build --dev . (or the watcher, with --dev). I think that should compile the development ones as well.

[CarlOlson]

@reebalazs -- Can you try @rolandpeelen/rewatch@dev and add run rewatch build --dev . (or the watcher, with --dev). I think that should compile the development ones as well.

This has no noticeable difference in my projects.

[reebalazs]

Hi @rolandpeelen, sorry for the delayed response — this somehow slipped my mind.

I’ve tested with version 1.0.12-dfb083e.0 from npm.

Here’s what I tried: in my project, I initially had a separate test-package set up for each package, which made rewatch work as expected. For this test, I moved one test file back into its original (non-test) package and added the test directory to the rescript.json like this:

{
  "dir": "__tests__",
  "subdirs": true,
  "type": "dev"
}

After that, I ran rewatch build --dev, but the file wasn’t compiled. The same happens with rewatch watch --dev.

To counter-test, if I remove "type": "dev", the file compiles as expected.

So based on this experiment, the issue still seems to persist in the version I tested. That said, I’m happy to continue testing — while using separate test packages works as a workaround, we’re effectively losing access to the dev sources feature that way. I’d love to see this resolved.

Let me know what else I can try!

[reebalazs]

@rolandpeelen: Update, I revisited this issue and tried again with 1.1.3.

Still the same results, my tests were not compiled at all with --dev.

I also noticed something weird. Not sure if this is related at all, just noting here.

rewatch build clean
rewatch build --dev        # errors

This gives me a bunch of errors:

thread '<unnamed>' panicked at src/build/compile.rs:382:58:
expect package

But if I do a rewatch build without --dev first, it will work with --dev from then on. By "work" I mean it does not give the above error. (It still does not compile my dev/test sources.)

rewatch build clean
rewatch build
rewatch build clean
rewatch build --dev   # works
# ...
rewatch build --dev   # works

Let me know how I could help - I'd love to see the dev compilation working. Putting the tests to a different package works as a workaround, but ... meh.