Presence of symlinks generated by nix development environments breaks live reload / file watching

[thilobillerbeck]

Astro Info

Astro                    v5.1.7
Node                     v22.12.0
System                   Linux (x64)
Package Manager          npm
Output                   static
Adapter                  none
Integrations             @astrojs/tailwind
                         @astrojs/mdx
                         @astrojs/sitemap
                         astro-icon
                         astro-favicons

If this issue only occurs in one browser, which browser is a problem?

No response

Describe the Bug

When symlinked files created by a Nix development environment (like a flake.nix) are present in a projects folder, live reload stops working.

This does not change when adding said files to either the ignorelist under fs nor under watch in the vite settings.

To make this bug reproducible, I set up the reproduce-symlink-bug branch in our project (the NixOS homepage) that provides an environment to easily reproduce the bug.

git clone --branch reproduce-symlink-bug https://github.com/NixOS/nixos-homepage.git

After cloning, entering the flake.nix dev environment with the inputsFrom = [ config.pre-commit.devShell ]; line commented out will result in an environment where live reload works perfectly. After uncommenting, the presence of the then generated .pre-commit-config.yaml symlink now breaks live reloading. Commenting out and deleting the symlink again returns the environment to its normal function.

This seems to be an Astro related bug, since I cannot reproduce it with either a blank Vite project nor with a blank script using chokidar.

related NixOS/nixos-homepage#1641

What's the expected result?

When changing files under the condition that the symlinked files are present, the site should still reload.

Link to Minimal Reproducible Example

https://github.com/NixOS/nixos-homepage/tree/reproduce-symlink-bug

Participation

• I am willing to submit a pull request for this issue.