Webpack config file (webpack.config.js) not working as expected

Question

I have an Angular project on Linux that generally works.

Angular CLI: 13.3.9
Node: 16.14.2

Package                         Version
---------------------------------------------------------
@angular-devkit/architect       0.1202.18
@angular-devkit/build-angular   13.3.9
@angular-devkit/core            12.2.18
@angular-devkit/schematics      13.3.9
@angular/cli                    13.3.9
@schematics/angular             13.3.9
rxjs                            7.5.6
typescript                      4.6.4

But when trying to ng serve the project, I am sometimes getting an endless stream of error messages such as

Watchpack Error (watcher): Error: ENOSPC: System limit for number of file watchers reached, watch '/home/me/my_project/node_modules/libp2p-utils/dist'

so I have to stop the process and then ng serve fails.

I wanted to solve this problem so I found this answer:

https://stackoverflow.com/a/72423671

I followed the instructions and then based on the following documentation

https://webpack.js.org/configuration/watch/#watch

I went ahead and had the following content in the new webpack.config.js file that I created:

module.exports = {
  //...
  watch: false,
};

Now, I think that that was supposed to make Webpack not watch any file.

But when I do ng serve, again I am getting what seems to be the same error messages as before. It seems like Webpack keeps watching those node_modules files.

I think the ng serve does see the webpack.config.js file, because when I change the setting to watch: blah,, I am getting the error message

An unhandled exception occurred: blah is not defined

I have also tried the following:

module.exports = {
  //...
  watchOptions: {
    ignored: '**/node_modules',
  },
};

But again, the same error messages.

Why doesn't the Webpack config work as expected?

Webpack config file (webpack.config.js) not working as expected

0 Answers0