Sources with type "dev" are not being compiled and are skipped.

[Yummy-sk]

I noticed that sources with the type "dev" are not being compiled and are being skipped in the get_source_files function. ( packages.rs#L451 )

Is there a reason for skipping the dev sources?

[CarlOlson]

Is this something that is being worked or would a PR be accepted? Any info on blockers would be nice. Without this I don't think most people will be able to use rewatch.

[rolandpeelen]

A PR would be super helpful here @Yummy-sk / @CarlOlson - I remember me and @jfrolich having a discussion about this at some point but I can't recall exactly why we skipped them. Perhaps enabling them 'just works ™'

[rolandpeelen]

Ok - so the reason we don't do this, is that for packages that get installed through node_modules, we sometimes don't find the folder. AKA - it's not in the files section of the package.json when being shipped.

Key example being the test folder of rescript-core - it's not in the corresponding package.json.

What we can do - and what we've done in the past, is just swallow the error, which I think could work here. We can just try to read the folder and compile.
However - this does come at a speed penalty as we're potentially building dev dependencies by third-parties. @jfrolich - IIRC, we currently don't distinguish between direct or transient dependencies, right? So there isn't currently a way of knowing wether the project should compile with dev or not.

Perhaps we should have a --debug and --release mode like Rust has? Where we compile the dev dependencies, unless we're building with --release mode?

[nojaf]

I believe I'm hitting this as well in https://github.com/rescript-lang/experimental-rescript-webapi
I don't think new tests/*.res (or changes) are picked up.

rescript.json snippet:

  "sources": [
    {
      "dir": "src",
      "subdirs": true
    },
    {
      "dir": "tests",
      "subdirs": true,
      "type": "dev"
    }
  ],

When users install my package the folder will indeed not be there.
But when I work on the project, it should compile these files.