ng serve: The filename hash for Shared Workers changes on every rebuild, which constantly breaks the debugging session.

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Assessment

Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Newbie friendliness
48/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Stale
Tech stack
angular, typescript
Domain
build-system, cli

Research direction

Start by reproducing the issue with ng serve using the linked ng-test-shared-worker example, then trace the development server's worker filename hashing during rebuilds. Done means Shared Worker filenames remain stable across code changes so browser debugging sessions and breakpoints do not need to be reopened.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

angular/build:application area: @angular/build freq1: low severity2: inconvenient type: bug/fix
Command

serve

Is this a regression?
  • Yes, this behavior used to work in the previous version
The previous version in which this bug was not present was

No response

Description

When developing an Angular application that uses a Shared Worker, the ng serve development server recompiles the worker file with a new content hash in its filename upon every code change
E.g.

ng serve
Initial chunk files | Names | Raw size
main.js | main | 7.00 kB |
styles.css | styles | 96 bytes |
Lazy chunk files | Names | Raw size
worker-GFCRGYH3.js | shared-worker | 405 bytes |
Application bundle generation complete. [1.497 seconds]

Page reload sent to client(s).
Initial chunk files | Names | Raw size
main.js | main | 7.00 kB |
Lazy chunk files | Names | Raw size
worker-4KFG4YB2.js | shared-worker | 404 bytes |

This behavior forces any developer debugging the worker via browser tools (like chrome://inspect/#workers or Edge's equivalent) to manually close the detached debugger and re-open a new inspector for the newly named worker file after every single save.
This makes the development and debugging workflow for Shared Workers extremely tedious and inefficient, as it's impossible to maintain a persistent debugging session with breakpoints.
This issue is specific to the development server's file hashing strategy. For comparison, when using a custom Webpack configuration, it's possible to configure the output filename for workers to remain constant during development, which provides a seamless debugging experience. The default Angular CLI behavior should strive for a similar developer experience.

Problem exist in angular from v17+ with esbuilder

Example of application: https://github.com/mkapinos/ng-test-shared-worker

Minimal Reproduction

git clone https://github.com/mkapinos/ng-test-shared-worker
npm i
npm start

open console for shared worker... change something in code

Exception or Error

Your Environment
@angular-devkit/architect    0.2000.1
@angular-devkit/core         20.0.1
@angular-devkit/schematics   20.0.1
@angular/build               20.0.1
@angular/cli                 20.0.1
@schematics/angular          20.0.1
rxjs                         7.8.2
typescript                   5.8.3
zone.js                      0.15.1
Anything else relevant?

No response

Dominant language
TypeScript
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