Recompile JSON after watch command

[kelyvin]

Even though the referenced JS module is being watched, this plugin does not recompile the JSON file on changes to the JS file.

This is due to my lack of understanding of how to "require" modules within the webpack plugin compiler, and so I am not pulling in the correct updated file. Would like some help or clarity in understanding how this works.

[theoephraim]

Hello! So I did some digging into this.

It looks like the issue is that the require call is caching the file contents from the first load, which makes sense. A temporary fix would be to add
delete require.cache[require.resolve(fullFilePath)]
just before the require statement.
However this will mean it will be regenerated on every change of any file.

The larger issue is that the way this is set up, you're basically sidestepping the normal webpack tree of modules/chunks/dependencies/etc and just say explicitly

• this file should be added to the list of all watched files
• when doing any webpack build (triggered by a change in any file), create this json file

I'm unclear on the exact details (and terminology), but I think you actually need to create a new module/chunk/? in the hierarchy, so that in this plugin you can see which assets have changed.
I think this may involve the additionaAssets hook to actually add another asset to the tree somehow, and then only emit the new json file when that file has changed.

If I have time I'll keep digging, but at least this should help a bit!

[kelyvin]

Thanks @theoephraim for looking into this! When I have some extra bandwidth I can help dive more into it as well. In the meantime, thanks for taking the initiative and let me know if there's anything we can collaborate on to address this!