cleanupOutputBeforeBuild when watching file changes

[timum-viw]

I'm not sure if this is wanted behaviour, but when using webpack --watch option the output folder apparently does not get cleared when recompiling after files change, even though I'm using cleanupOutputBeforeBuild. Normally the output files should get overwritten, but since I'm also using enableVersioning option I end up with a whole bunch of versioned files in my output folder.
Any thought about that?
Cheers

[Lyrkan]

Hi @timum-viw,

I would guess that's caused by the fact that the watch option of the clean-webpack-plugin isn't set to true when cleanOutputBeforeBuild is called.

There is a pending PR that'll allow to configure this plugin more easily (#152) but in the meantime you could try something like this:

// webpack.config.js
const Encore = require('@symfony/webpack-encore');
const CleanWebpackPlugin = require('clean-webpack-plugin');

Encore
  .setOutputPath('build/')
  .setPublicPath('/')
  .cleanupOutputBeforeBuild()
  // ...
;

const config = Encore.getWebpackConfig();

for (const plugin of config.plugins) {
  if ((plugin instanceof CleanWebpackPlugin) && plugin.options) {
    plugin.options.watch = true;
  }
}

module.exports = config;

[timum-viw]

sounds reasonable. the workaround seems to work for now.
Thanks!

[timum-viw]

ay, I was a bit quick on the last one. seems like not all files get rebuild. so now I'm missing the files that were unchanged..
Ideas?

[Lyrkan]

You're right, it seems that it can't be done using clean-webpack-plugin:

• With 'watch' option enabled ALL chunks are removed after each new compilation johnagan/clean-webpack-plugin#43
• Watch mode deletes all files regardless of changes johnagan/clean-webpack-plugin#54

[stof]

Well, cleaning only invalidated files is quite hard to solve actually

[weaverryan]

So this is not something we can fix. If clean-webpack-plugin fixes it someday, awesome! So, I'm closing for now!