Cannot watch specific dependencies in node_modules

[SystemParadox]

Describe the bug

The documentation for server.watch contains the following example:

server: {
    watch: {
        ignored: ['!**/node_modules/your-package-name/**']
    }
},

This example does not work. It appears that the builtin **/node_modules/** exclude causes chokidar to not even look in node_modules despite the negation in the subdirectory.

It appears this was originally tested (see #5023 and #5239) with ignored: ['!**/node_modules/**']. This does work, but in a real project will almost immediately result in Error: ENOSPC: System limit for number of file watchers reached.

See paulmillr/chokidar#1225. I played with various chokidar options but I couldn't see a way to achieve this.

Reproduction

See chokidar issue.

System Info

System:
    OS: Linux 5.4 Linux Mint 20.3 (Una)
    CPU: (12) x64 AMD Ryzen 5 2600 Six-Core Processor
    Memory: 4.20 GB / 15.56 GB
    Container: Yes
    Shell: 5.0.17 - /bin/bash
  Binaries:
    Node: 16.15.1 - /usr/bin/node
    npm: 8.1.1 - ~/npm/bin/npm
  Browsers:
    Chrome: 102.0.5005.61
    Firefox: 101.0
  npmPackages:
    vite: ^2.9.12 => 2.9.12

Used Package Manager

npm

Logs

No response

Validations

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• Read the Contributing Guidelines.
• Read the docs.
• Check that there isn't already an issue that reports the same bug to avoid creating a duplicate.
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• The provided reproduction is a minimal reproducible example of the bug.

[sapphi-red]

Vite's document seems to be wrong (or there was a behavior change on chokidar side?).
See #7850.

[bluwy]

I also wonder if the order matters:

vite/packages/vite/src/node/server/index.ts

Lines 284 to 288 in d402ad3

	ignored: [
	'**/node_modules/**',
	'**/.git/**',
	...(Array.isArray(ignored) ? ignored : [ignored])
	],

say if we move the user-specified ones at the top before **/node_modules/** 🤔

[SystemParadox]

@bluwy good thought but alas no, swapping the order doesn't help:

ignored: [
    '!**/node_modules/foo/**',
    '**/node_modules/**',
],

Chokidar still seems to ignore the whole of node_modules and doesn't bother looking inside it.

[ryzr]

@SystemParadox

If it's any help, creating a custom plugin to override the vite-enforced watch options seems to have worked for me

{
    name: 'watch-node-modules',
    configureServer: (server: ViteDevServer) : void => {
        server.watcher.options = {
            ...server.watcher.options,
            ignored: [
                /node_modules\/(?!my-package-name).*/,
                '**/.git/**',
            ]
        }
    }
}

[SystemParadox]

Thanks, that's very helpful as a temporary workaround until chokidar provides an official recommendation of how to fix this properly.

To preempt anyone who tries to close this:

1. I should not have to add a plugin to include/exclude files, especially since there is an option already for this - it just doesn't work
2. Negative regex lookaheads are absolutely not acceptable as a long term solution

[MadLittleMods]

Similar to #6718, it would be nice to exclude locally linked packages from being ignored by default. When I make a change in a sub-dependency, I want the bundle to rebuild.

[VanCoding]

I currently can't use vite because of this issue. I have a monorepo, where I build dependencies separately. but vite doesn't detect changes to them and there seems to be no way of making it detect them. The trick with the plugin by @bluwy didn't work for me either.

[MadLittleMods]

The workaround above using a custom plugin doesn't work for a plain vite.build({ watch: true }) because the configureServer hook never gets called when you're not using the dev server.

I tried using the options universal hook to replace inputOptions.watch.chokidar.ignored as desired but doesn't seem to have any effect on what is actually watched/ignored.

Custom Vite plugin (doesn't work):

{
  name: 'watch-node-modules',
  options(inputOptions) {
    inputOptions.watch.chokidar.ignored = [
      /node_modules\/(?!hydrogen-view-sdk).*/,
      '**/.git/**',
    ];
    return inputOptions;
  }
}

When using Vite, inputOptions.watch.chokidar.ignored is normally:

[
  '**/.git/**',
  '**/node_modules/**',
  '**/test-results/**',
  '/home/eric/Documents/github/element/matrix-public-archive/node_modules/.vite/**'
]