Webpack dev server reload doesn't work on virtual box - vagrant

Question

I'm running a webpack server on virtual box with Ubuntu 15.10 using vagrant over mac OSX.
The webpack config is pretty clean:
var HtmlWebpackPlugin = require('html-webpack-plugin');
var path = require('path');
var webpack = require('webpack');
var MINIFY = process.env.MINIFY === true;
var FRONTEND_ROOT = './static'
var SRC_PATCH = FRONTEND_ROOT + '/scripts';
var BUILD_PATH = './dist';
module.exports = {
entry: SRC_PATCH + '/main.js',
devtool: 'source-map',
output: {
path: BUILD_PATH,
filename: 'bundle.js'
},
resolve: {
extensions: ['', '.js', '.jsx'],
modulesDirectories: [SRC_PATCH, 'node_modules']
},
plugins: [
new HtmlWebpackPlugin({
filename: 'index.html',
template: path.resolve(FRONTEND_ROOT, 'index-template.html'),
minify: MINIFY
})
],
module: {
loaders: [
{
test: /\.jsx|js$/,
exclude: /node_modules/,
loader: 'babel-loader'
}
]
},
eslint: {
configFile: './.eslintrc'
}
};
Webpack was run on VM by
vagrant#vagrant-ubuntu-wily-64:/vagrant$ webpack-dev-server --port 8080 --devtool eval --progress --colors --hot --content-base dist
And when I edit a file from OSX it doesn't reload, but if I edit the same file from VM it'll reload.
What is the problem? How can I fix it?

Answer 1

I've solved my problem with vagrant rsync-auto
https://docs.vagrantup.com/v2/cli/rsync-auto.html
I'd added the line config.vm.synced_folder ".", "/vagrant", type: "rsync", rsync_auto: true, rsync_exclude: ".git/" to my Vagrantfile, and run vagrant rsync-auto under a separate tab.

Answer 2

This is answered under another question:
https://stackoverflow.com/a/34937378/5114
If you add the --watch-poll option it changes the way webpack looks for file changes.
webpack-dev-server --watch-poll --port 8080 --devtool eval --progress --colors --hot --content-base dist
This makes webpack poll for changes to the files every N milliseconds. Polling works in the Vagrant shared directories when the normal method doesn't because it doesn't look for mtime or other filesystem attributes, just reads the files on an interval. It's slower and uses more cpu/memory, so don't use polling unless you have to.
https://webpack.github.io/docs/cli.html#watch

Answer 3

Long story short: no any changes made to the files on the host system (MacOS) are propagated as events to the guest box synced_folder.
So features relying on filesystem events like Webpack's "hot reload" (webpack-hot-middleware), nodemon's --watch option and so forth won't work.
The underlying reason is, VirtualBox has decided not to implement inotify.
Quote:
The reason is that the host and the guest might have different file systems and vboxsf would have to implement a generic protocol to forward that information from the host to the guest. And this would have to work between many different host/guest combinations. Therefore marking this ticket as "won't fix", sorry.
The workaround is to use rsync as desribed in this answer from Maxim Shepelin.

Answer 4

the first thing you need to see is if in the console where you're running the server, the recompiled process is happening or not. If' not the answer is in the SyncFolder line that #maxim-schepelin said above. If is recompiling and the web page is not reloading maybe the webPack solution.
Edit
Another reason for the folder sync not working the righ way could be this https://github.com/guard/listen/wiki/Increasing-the-amount-of-inotify-watchers