Bug: Infinite loop in rc-apps watch

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  • #175 by @someone — closed without merging

Assessment

Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Newbie friendliness
45/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
node.js, typescript
Domain
cli, tooling

Research direction

Start at the rc-apps watch entry point and inspect how .rcappsconfig and its ignoredFiles patterns are passed to the file watcher. Reproduce on Windows/WSL2 with an empty dist/ directory, then verify that generated dist/ artifacts and node_modules/ changes no longer trigger repeated builds or deployments.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Description

The rc-apps watch command enters an infinite build loop on Windows/WSL2 environments. This happens because the file watcher triggers on build artifacts (in dist/) or dependency changes (node_modules/), creating a cycle:
Change -> Build -> Update dist/ -> Change Detected -> Build ...

This occurs even when dist/** is added to .rcappsconfig, suggesting chokidar ignore patterns are not behaving as expected in this environment or the default ignores are insufficient.

Steps to Reproduce

  1. Setup:
    • Create a new app and setup .rcappsconfig
    • Ensure dist/ folder does not exist or is empty.
  2. Execution:
    • Run rc-apps watch .
  3. Observation:
    • The CLI packages and deploys the app successfully.
    • Immediately after, it detects a change (likely the new dist/ artifact) and deploys again.
    • This loop continues indefinitely.
    • Logs shows:
Image
  1. Failure of Mitigation:
    • Adding **/node_modules/** , dist/** and **/dist/** to .rcappsconfig ignoredFiles does not stop the loop in this environment.

Environment Details

  • OS: Windows (WSL2 / Ubuntu)
  • Node Version: v22.16.0
  • Rocket.Chat Server: v7.13.2
  • CLI Version: 1.13.0 wsl-x64 node-v20.19.6
Dominant language
TypeScript
Stars
49
Forks
40
No merged PRs in 30d

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