[FEATURE REQUEST] Add browsersync?

[robdodson]

A very much loved feature of PSK is browsersync which is kind of like an improved version of live reload. We include this by default in the PSK gulpfile so running gulp serve will start up a local server running browsersync and users can just start playing with their app on different devices. Have you all given any thought toward including something like this in CLI?

[oneezy]

Not only loved...
I honestly CAN'T LIVE without it!

• 24,326 developers in the last day
• 161,678 developers in the last week
• 694,946 developers in the last month

Would agree.

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@addyosmani

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Alright... I made my argument. Lol

[FredKSchott]

This is definitely something we want to add support for, but recently we've had to prioritize other work (Windows support, etc). In the meantime, PRs are always welcome.

[justinfagnani]

This is one of those features where I wonder if it belongs as a built-in option, or if it should be easy to add via a Gulp integration. We desperately need to define and implement our extension points, so I'm tempted to say that we should wait on this and see if it can help as a use case for extensions.

[robdodson]

Yeah by all means, work on the extension points first :)

[JGSolutions]

Quick question! So if I started a project and I am half way through it. Then eventually this browsersync feature gets added to the polymer-cli will it be easy for me to update my current project?

By doing this: npm update -g polymer-cli will it do the job?

[oneezy]

@JGSolutions , have a look at issue #835

It goes into a bit more depth of how things are going to be handled.

[justinfagnani]

We're working on the hooks now, we'll see where this fits in after they're in.

[kpgarrod]

I just created my first project with polymer-cli and hit this limitation. It is quite straightforward to run browser-sync alongside polymer serve. In case it helps somebody, here's what I did:

1. npm init inside your project directory to create a package.json file
2. npm install browser-sync --save-dev in the same directory
3. add a start script to package.json:

,
  "scripts": {
    "test": "polymer test",
    "start": "browser-sync start --proxy localhost:8080 --files 'src/*.html, src/*.js, images/*' "
  },

Then you can just run npm start in a second terminal tab alongside polymer serve
It takes the pain away.

[JGSolutions]

@kpgarrod Thanks man! works great!

[kpgarrod]

A small improvement:

"scripts": {
    "dev": "polymer serve & npm run watch",
    "test": "polymer test",
    "watch": "browser-sync start --proxy localhost:8080 --files 'src/*.html, src/*.js, images/*' "
  },

Now just npm run dev starts both processes.

[pomber]

@kpgarrod's package.json was not working for me in Windows/VS Code (cmd).
I changed & to |:

"scripts": {
    "dev": "polymer serve | npm run watch",
    "test": "polymer test",
    "watch": "browser-sync start --proxy localhost:8080 --files '*/*.html, src/*.js' "
},

Now it works.

[oravecz]

Is the fact that this very expected feature is still not built-in a sign of?

1. extending polymer-cli is very hard, or
2. it is terrible to have to create a custom build just to add this feature, or
3. it is less horrible to add npm to a bower project just to get this capability