Webpack --watch and launching nodemon?

Question

Thanks to an excellent answer by @McMath I now have webpack compiling both my client and my server. I\'m now on to trying to make webpack --watch be useful. Ideally

Answer 1

In addition to @Ling's good answer:

If you want to build your project once, before you watch it with nodemon, you can use a webpack compiler hook. The plugin's code triggers nodemon in the done hook once after webpack has finished its compilation (see also this helpful post).

const { spawn } = require("child_process")

function OnFirstBuildDonePlugin() {
  let isInitialBuild = true
  return {
    apply: compiler => {
      compiler.hooks.done.tap("OnFirstBuildDonePlugin", compilation => {
        if (isInitialBuild) {
          isInitialBuild = false
          spawn("nodemon dist/index.js --watch dist", {
            stdio: "inherit",
            shell: true
          })
        }
      })
    }
  }
}

webpack.config.js:

  module.exports = {
    ... 
    plugins: [
      ... 
      OnFirstBuildDonePlugin()
    ]
  })

package.json:

"scripts": {
  "dev"  : "webpack --watch"
},

Hope, it helps.