Live reload not working

[rashil2000]

The browser page does not refresh whenever I edit and save the file.

[OS: Windows 10]

[yuanqing]

Unfortunately I’m not able to reproduce this issue on OSX. (And also unable to debug because I don’t have a Windows PC.)

To be precise, the expected behavior is that when your Markdown file changes, the rendered page should update transparently without a refresh – note that this is different from how “Live Reload” works.

[rashil2000]

Yes, even the transparent update doesn't work unfortunately.

Is there something I can help you debug it?

[rashil2000]

Would you please point me towards the part of the code that does file-watching? I'll see if I can fix and send a PR.
Thanks!

[rashil2000]

I have located the issue: the address 0.0.0.0 does not work on Windows (or maybe it's not configured to route to localhost by default)

Changing it here:

rdd/src/js/serve.js

Line 87 in f85dc5d

const url = `0.0.0.0:${serverPort}/${file}`

and here:

rdd/src/js/client.js

Line 5 in f85dc5d

`ws://0.0.0.0:${window.__rddWebSocketPort}/`

to 127.0.0.1 works!

Would you like me to send a PR?

[yuanqing]

Is there a way to make a change that would work for both MacOS and Windows?

[rashil2000]

I believe the address 127.0.0.1 should work everywhere - Linux/Mac/Win.

Does it not work for you (I don't have a way to check on MacOS)?

[yuanqing]

@rashil2000 Are you able to verify if the fix in #3 fixes the issue on WIndows?

[rashil2000]

Hi @yuanqing

Yes, the address change fixes the live-reloading issue.

However, there are multiple other quirks in rdd that prevent it from building under, and running properly on Windows.

1. The build script uses cat command, which does not exist on Windows:

   rdd/package.json

   Line 63 in f85dc5d

   "build-css-light": "mkdirp build/css && cat src/css/style.css node_modules/highlight.js/styles/default.css node_modules/highlight.js/styles/github.css node_modules/github-markdown-css/github-markdown.css | csso --output build/css/light.css",

2. The path resolution library globby, that is being used to resolve markdown files, does not work with Windows-style paths.

   rdd/src/js/resolve-markdown-files.js

   Line 22 in f85dc5d

   const files = await globby(filtered, { caseSensitiveMatch: false })

I have a fork of rdd, which is 2 commits ahead of upstream, and fixes these problems.

• The fix for 1. is replacing both mkdirp and rimraf with the shx library, which, in addition to providing mkdir and rm commands, also provides a cat command. The commit is f5434da.
• The fix for 2. is removing the library globby altogether (this may not be what you want), and letting Nodejs's core path module handle the paths. The commit is e10cbbd.