Use with watchify

[jbalboni]

We've been using browserify-incremental where I work for a while and I've found that it doesn't work well with watchify. I know there's some overlap there in what this and watchify are supposed to accomplish, but even with the faster compilation between runs, it's nice to have a watch mode that watches the right files and triggers a bundle when they change.

From playing around with watchify, it looks like the issue is that browserify-incremental doesn't emit file events for cached files. I wrote a hackish plugin to change that:

var BrowserifyCache = require('browserify-cache-api');

module.exports = function incrementalWatchPlugin(b) {
    var hasReadCache = false;
    b.on('bundle', function() {
        var cache;
        if (!hasReadCache) {
            cache = BrowserifyCache.getCache(b);
            Object.keys(cache.dependentFiles).forEach(function(file) {
                b.emit('file', file);
            });
            Object.keys(cache.modules).forEach(function(file) {
                b.emit('file', file);
            });
        }
        hasReadCache = true;
    });
};

This seems to work, but it's not super efficient. Watchify still has a cache it doesn't need.

Do you have any thoughts on this? Is there a better way to have a working watch mode? Is there a reason browserify-incremental doesn't emit file events?

browserify-incremental is awesome, by the way. It's the main reason we're still using Browserify; otherwise it'd be too slow for us.

[jklmli]

Take a look at uber-watchify, it might have what you're looking for.