Document "passive watcher" usage

[rijkvanzanten]

Describe the feature

Hi there! I've been very interested in trying out the recommended "Passive Watcher" alternative to watching. I was able to find the hidden unbuild --stub command through the issues, but don't know what the next step is supposed to be. I've tried running the output with node dist/index.mjs which does start the h3/listhen powered server, but doesn't restart it when the file change (so it doesn't watch). Using node's native --watch doesn't work either, as jiti doesn't use an "import", so Node's watcher doesn't recognize the file change.

I should be able to make it work with nodemon (eg nodemon --watch src dist/index.mjs), but I'm very curious to learn how this is supposed to work 🙂

Additional information

• Would you be willing to help implement this feature?

[rijkvanzanten]

Here's what I'm currently landing on using. Curious to hear your thoughts! If this is the recommended approach, I'm more than happy to open a PR to tweak the docs 👍🏻

	"scripts": {
		"build": "unbuild",
		"start": "node dist/index.mjs",
		"stub": "unbuild --stub",
		"dev": "node --watch-path=src dist/index.mjs"
	},

To run in production, run npm run build followed by npm start. For dev server usage, run npm run stub and npm run dev. Note: I was having some issues with --watch-path in Node 18. I've upgraded to v20 which seems to resolve those issues

[so1ve]

The stub mode means you don't have to build everytime once you changed the code. If you want to build it instantly, try to use privatenumber/pkgroll

[rijkvanzanten]

The stub mode means you don't have to build everytime once you changed the code. If you want to build it instantly, try to use privatenumber/pkgroll

Yeah! Though if that is all it's intended to do, I think the name "Watcher" is a tad misleading, as it doesn't "watch" like you'd expect from a --watch flag in other CLI tools 🙂

[pi0]

• Active watcher: Active watcher roadmap #281
• Docs: Documentation improvements #398