Dev build not working correctly - Platform.ready not firing

[marcsyp]

Ionic version: (check one with "x")
[ ] 1.x
[X] 2.x

I'm submitting a ... (check one with "x")
[X] bug report
[ ] feature request
[ ] support request => Please do not submit support requests here, use one of these channels: https://forum.ionicframework.com/ or http://ionicworldwide.herokuapp.com/

Current behavior:
Deviceready does not fire for at least 8 seconds in dev builds, causing the app to break (platform.ready() fails because ready does not exist on undefined). Using '--prod' works, but livereload is not available in prod builds as far as I know.

Expected behavior:
Using "ionic run android": Deviceready fires, does not time out, and app works. Livereload works.

Related code:

//error is related to the following piece of code:

 initializeApp() {
    this.platform.ready().then(() => {                                                             
      // Okay, so the platform is ready and our plugins are available.
      // Here you can do any higher level native things you might need.
      StatusBar.styleDefault();

      this.hideSplashScreen();

      console.log('Platform ready.');
      console.log(this.stringToTime('445'));
      ...
   }
}

Platform is injected correctly and I can confirm that building with --prod does indeed work.

Other information:
As documented in this issue, upgrading to app-scripts 1.0.0 (and CLI 2.1.18) causes slow deviceReady in dev builds. Some people only have a slow load time, in my case, my app breaks because platform.ready() fails. The proposed solution is to build with the --prod flag, but this eliminates the possibility of running dev builds on the device.

Ionic info:

Cordova CLI: 6.4.0
Ionic Framework Version: 2.0.0-rc.4
Ionic CLI Version: 2.1.18
Ionic App Lib Version: 2.1.9
Ionic App Scripts Version: 0.0.47 (downgraded from 1.0.0, still have problems)
ios-deploy version: Not installed
ios-sim version: Not installed
OS: Windows 7
Node Version: v6.9.4
Xcode version: Not installed

package.json:

{
  "name": "augmenta",
  "author": "Marc Syp",
  "homepage": "http://zzz.com/",
  "private": true,
  "scripts": {
    "clean": "ionic-app-scripts clean",
    "build": "ionic-app-scripts build",
    "ionic:build": "ionic-app-scripts build",
    "ionic:serve": "ionic-app-scripts serve"
  },
  "dependencies": {
    "@angular/common": "2.2.1",
    "@angular/compiler": "2.2.1",
    "@angular/compiler-cli": "2.2.1",
    "@angular/core": "2.2.1",
    "@angular/forms": "2.2.1",
    "@angular/http": "2.2.1",
    "@angular/platform-browser": "2.2.1",
    "@angular/platform-browser-dynamic": "2.2.1",
    "@angular/platform-server": "2.2.1",
    "@ionic/storage": "1.1.7",
    "ionic-angular": "2.0.0-rc.4",
    "ionic-native": "2.2.11",
    "ionicons": "3.0.0",
    "rxjs": "5.0.0-beta.12",
    "zone.js": "0.6.26"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "@ionic/app-scripts": "0.0.47",
    "typescript": "2.0.9"
  },
  "cordovaPlugins": [
    "cordova-plugin-whitelist",
    "cordova-plugin-console",
    "cordova-plugin-statusbar",
    "cordova-plugin-device",
    "cordova-plugin-splashscreen",
    "ionic-plugin-keyboard"
  ],
  "cordovaPlatforms": [],
  "description": "Augmenta: An Ionic project"
}

tsconfig.json:

{
  "compilerOptions": {
    "allowSyntheticDefaultImports": true,
    "declaration": false,
    "emitDecoratorMetadata": true,
    "experimentalDecorators": true,
    "lib": [
      "dom",
      "es2015"
    ],
    "module": "es2015",
    "moduleResolution": "node",
    "sourceMap": true,
    "target": "es5"
  },
  "include": [
    "src/**/*.ts"
  ],
  "exclude": [
    "node_modules"
  ],
  "compileOnSave": false,
  "atom": {
    "rewriteTsconfig": false
  }
}

@mhartington as requested.

[danbucholtz]

@marcsyp,

How slow are we talking here? What is the diff from when it was faster? Did you change anything related to your environment besides upgrading to 1.0.0 of app-scripts? My gut feeling is this is unrelated to app-scripts. Do you have any other info you can offer or a repository where I can easily recreate the issue?

Thanks,
Dan

[rapropos]

You may be able to at least work around the problem by increasing the loadUrlTimeoutValue preference in config.xml.

[tobiasmuecksch]

@danbucholtz I can confirm, that the dev build of my app takes 5 (up to 10) seconds to load on my android device (which causes an asset load error) - compared to the prod version which takes less than a second on the very same device. No changes to the code of the app.

[tobiasmuecksch]

@danbucholtz I could send you the source of our app via mail, since I am not allowed to make the repo public.

[pawelfrydrych]

I confirm that in app-scripts 1.0.0 app is loading much slower than in 0.0.45, but prod mode solve this problem.

[mhartington]

@rapropos that is not really an ideal workaround, and should be avoided.

[danbucholtz]

It sounds like this is working as expected, then. Development builds will be slower than prod builds because they don't use the ahead-of-time compiler.

I'm going to close this issue but will revisit if needed.

Thanks,
Dan

[marcsyp]

@danbucholtz Seriously?? not trying to be snarky here, but I'm having a hard time understanding how you can close this issue with "works as expected". Development builds breaking -- no way to run a development build on a device -- that's "works as expected" to you??

My deviceready fires after about 7-8 seconds, as you should see in the above screenshot. Meanwhile, the platform.ready() call fails, causing whitescreen.

Incidentally, @rapropos I did try your solution of defining the LoadUrlTimeoutValue explicitly to 20000, however I should note that by default it should already be set to 20000, and it did not make any difference. I suspect that perhaps app load and deviceReady/platformReady are perhaps not affected by this preference.

All that said -- I do not know precisely what the problem is -- not sure why the deviceReady firing slowly would cause a total app meltdown -- but I do know that it used to work and now it doesn't. Perhaps the slow build is not in fact the culprit. But I'd really like to get to the bottom of this so I can actually develop my app on the device, preferably with livereload so I don't have to wait 40 seconds for my build for every tiny change. If someone at Ionic could help us get there, that would be great.

Is there an option, for instance, to get the dev builds to use the AoT compiler? I don't mind waiting longer for the initial build if it means I can get livereload working.

Any help tracking this down appreciated.

Thanks,
Marc

[rapropos]

Is there an option, for instance, to get the dev builds to use the AoT compiler?

$ ionic build android --aot

At the risk of incurring further @mhartington wrath,

I did try your solution of defining the LoadUrlTimeoutValue explicitly to 20000

When I ran into this problem, I bumped it to 800000, which at least allowed the app to launch and be debuggable, which was really what I needed at the time.

[danbucholtz]

Try ionic run android --livereload.

If there is an issue here with ionic or app-scripts, we can look into it but it sounds like the app is just starting up slowly. That'll happen with Android when using development builds.

Thanks,
Dan