Command immediately runs on startup even without a change

[mikehaertl]

I have a simple npm-script setup like:

"scripts": {
  "watch:css": "watch 'npm run build:css -s' app/src --ignoreDotFiles",
  "build:css": "node-sass --output-style compressed app/src/main.scss > css/main.css"
}

I find that when I run npm watch:css it always immediately runs the npm run build:css without waiting for a changed file. Is this expected behavior? I would expect that the command does nothing until the first change is detected.

If this is by design, can we get a command flag that waits for the first change?

Additional info: I'm running this inside a docker container and the watched directory is a volume mounted from the host machine.

[airtonix]

I expect this as a feature.

That we have different expectations about watch interestingly brings up the throttle and debounce functions in lodash... both of which have flags for leading or trailing.

if you can't be bothered waiting, there is another npm package called watch-cli that performs a trailing action instead of this packages leading behaviour (which I prefer).

Or even better, you can use onchange

[mikehaertl]

Ok, thanks. Still I it really depends on the use case, so both behaviors can make sense, depending on the project setup. So an additional option flag would be great.