ionic serve should not need internet connection

[dmastag]

Short description of the problem:

I tried running ionic serve while I was offline and got this message

ionic serve
[ERROR] An error occurred while running npm view ionic dist-tags.latest --json (exit code 1):

        npm ERR! code ENOTFOUND
        npm ERR! errno ENOTFOUND
        npm ERR! syscall getaddrinfo
        npm ERR! network getaddrinfo ENOTFOUND registry.npmjs.org registry.npmjs.org:443
        npm ERR! network This is a problem related to network connectivity.
        npm ERR! network In most cases you are behind a proxy or have bad network settings.
        npm ERR! network
        npm ERR! network If you are behind a proxy, please make sure that the
        npm ERR! network 'proxy' config is set properly.  See: 'npm help config'
        {
          "error": {
            "code": "ENOTFOUND",
            "summary": "getaddrinfo ENOTFOUND registry.npmjs.org registry.npmjs.org:443",
            "detail": "This is a problem related to network connectivity.\nIn most cases you are behind a proxy or have bad network settings.\n\nIf you are behind a proxy, please make sure that the\n'proxy' config is set properly.  See: 'npm help config'"
          }
        }

        npm ERR! A complete log of this run can be found in:
        npm ERR!     C:\Users\xxx\AppData\Roaming\npm-cache\_logs\2017-06-06T03_14_01_930Z-debug.log

What behavior are you expecting?

We should still be able to use ionic serve even when we are offline

Steps to reproduce:

1. Disconnect from the Internet
2. run ionic serve

insert any relevant code between the above and below backticks

Post the output of ionic info below please

Other information: (e.g. stacktraces, related issues, suggestions how to fix, stackoverflow links, forum links, etc)

ionic info

global packages:

    @ionic/cli-utils : 1.3.0
    Cordova CLI      : 7.0.1
    Ionic CLI        : 3.3.0

local packages:

    @ionic/app-scripts              : 1.3.7
    @ionic/cli-plugin-cordova       : 1.3.0
    @ionic/cli-plugin-ionic-angular : 1.3.0
    Cordova Platforms               : android 6.2.3 ios 4.3.1
    Ionic Framework                 : ionic-angular 3.3.0

System:

    Node       : v8.0.0
    OS         : Windows 10
    Xcode      : not installed
    ios-deploy : not installed
    ios-sim    : not installed

[imhoffd]

Agreed. The CLI should have a mode that disables (known) network requests.

📝 --connectivity / --no-connectivity

[dmastag]

Would it be possible to use try and catch instead?
So if the CLI is unable to connect to the npm repository, it just skips and starts the server.

[imhoffd]

For the update checks, yes, it makes sense. They are supplementary network calls.

Some commands that do essential network calls, like ionic upload, should fail.

[imhoffd]

Okay, there is a try/catch around those update checks. The connectivity mode will have to wait, unfortunately.

[moldstadt]

Any chance of a release or nightly with this fix? I'm going to be travelling for a couple of days and would like to be able to serve while offline.

[imhoffd]

@moldstadt 3.4.0 was just released!