Live reload does not seem to work. I make changes,...

# compose-web

[Mihai Voicescu]

Live reload does not seem to work. I make changes, save, webpack runs and nothing happens. You have to restart the server for it to work...

I running with jsBrowserDevelopmentRun

The browser just states that no actual changes were detected...

[Big Chungus]

You need gradle continuous build ./gradlew jsBrowserRun -t

[Mihai Voicescu]

Thank you @Big Chungus

[LeoColman]

@Big Chungus on the same subject, my project seems to reload twice before actually displaying updates. Do you know what exactly causes this?

[Big Chungus]

That's expected. It reloads once due to webpack changes (as described in the original post) and once again once kotlin files are recompiled to js

[Big Chungus]

Should be fixable, but looks like kotlin/js teams didn't get to it just yet.

[LeoColman]

It's not exactly urgent 😄

[Big Chungus]

Yep, it won't be any quicker even if we get rid of first reload since the main blocker is kjs compilation. Just annoying is all.

[LeoColman]

Usually it goes:
1. First reload: Why didn't my div size change?
2. Second reload: Ah, it did

[Norbi]

"I make changes, save" - It does not work for me either. I don't know if it should or not.
Although if
1. I build the project (CTRL+F9 in Idea)
2. AND after the build I reload the application explicitly (F5 in the browser)
it works. Not fast but works :)
Usually there is an automatic reload in the browser between 1. and 2. but to see the changes I have to manually refresh in the browser after the build is finished.
So, the development flow is far from perfect but acceptable :)

[Big Chungus]

@Norbi you can skip step 1 with gradle continuous builds (same end result just automated)

[Norbi]

"you can skip step 1 with gradle continuous builds" - Yes... But if you have a multi-module project where the backend is also part of the same Idea project then the continuous build is not always practical...

[Big Chungus]

Why not? You don;t have to start it from root project. Consider this module structure

/root
  /server
  /client

With that then you can start continuous build just for the client via ./gradlew :client:jsBrowserRun -t

[Norbi]

The problem is with common projects shared by both the client and the server.
When I modify common code the continuous build forces the automatic reload of the Spring Boot server application as well which I not always want. (At least as I remember that was the cause why I stopped using the continuous build.)

[Big Chungus]

Why wouldn't you want to reload your server if it depends on common code that has changed?

[Big Chungus]

To avoid this, you could start your server from prebuilt fat-jar. That way code changes won't reload it

[Norbi]

"you could start your server from prebuilt fat-jar" - I'm not sure that Spring Boot live reloading works with pre-built jar but I will try it some day, thanks :)

[Big Chungus]

Isn't the point to avoid spring live reloading? Fat jar is means to do exactly that - start server once and disconnect it from source code and gradle that way