cra-build-watch
A script for create-react-app that writes development builds to the disk
Forked from https://github.com/Nargonath/cra-build-watch in order to work with newer react-scripts
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# Disclaimer
**The builds resulting from this script are NOT for production environment.** They lack various optimizations.
This script is meant as a temporary workaround for `create-react-app` project based until this feature is built-in into `react-scripts`. See [create-react-app#1070](https://github.com/facebook/create-react-app/issues/1070).
This script is inspired by other work related such as: https://gist.github.com/jasonblanchard/ae0d2e304a647cd847c0b4493c2353d4.
# Why do I need this?
As of now (20/04/2018), `create-react-app` (more precisely `react-scripts`) does not allow development builds to be written to the disk because it uses `webpackDevServer` to serve your build files and folders ([for good reasons](https://github.com/facebook/create-react-app/issues/1070#issuecomment-261812303)). The problem is that in some cases you need to have these files written to the disk i.e:
* Developing browser extensions using React.
* Incorporating your React application into an existing application.
* Serving your React app with a dedicated backend.
# Installation
Add it to your project using `npm`:
```
npm install -D cra-build-watch-js
```
or using `yarn`:
```
yarn add -D cra-build-watch-js
```
# Usage
Add a new script into your `package.json`:
```json
{
"scripts": {
"watch": "cra-build-watch"
}
}
```
Run that script:
```
npm run watch
```
with Yarn:
```
yarn watch
```
# Configuration
By default the script will generate everything into `build/` at your project root and remove the public path from webpack's configuration.
If those defaults do not work for you, the script accepts some arguments:
* `-b|--build-path`: expects either an absolute or relative path. If a relative path is given it will be prefixed by your project root path.
* default: `yourProjectRoot/build`.
* `-p|--public-path`: expects a relative URL where `/` is the root. If you serve your files using an external webserver this argument is to match with your web server configuration. More information can be found in [webpack configuration guide](https://webpack.js.org/configuration/output/#output-publicpath).
* default: "".
* `-v|--verbose`: display webpack build output.