Brunch watch doesn't see any changes, doesn't compile, doesn't reload, doesn't do anything after first compilation

Description

No changes detected in 2.4.2. Nothing at all in the logs even with the -d option after the initial compilation. No changes are ever detected even to the brunch.config.coffee and usePolling: true doesn’t do anything. 1.7.19 works for me. 1.8.5 logs the change events when using brunch w -d but doesn’t recompile or reload the browser. So definitely between there something got messed up and in 2.4.2 and I assume any other version 2, it doesn’t even work at all. I’d test more versions from npm, but npm takes so incredibly long to install. Also, doing npm update obviously has problems and can’t be relied upon to install dependencies clean.

Environment

1. Brunch: 2.4.2, 1.8.5, 1.7.19
2. Node: 4.x and 5.8.0
3. NPM: 2.x, 3.7.3
4. Operating system: Ubuntu 14.04

package.json contents

{
  "name": "compliance_dictionary",
  "version": "0.1.0",
  "license": "UNLICENSED",
  "repository": {
    "type": "git",
    "url": "https://bitbucket.org/unifiedcompliance/compliance_dictionary"
  },
  "scripts": {
    "start": "brunch watch",
    "postinstall": "bower install",
    "postupdate": "bower update"
  },
  "engines": {
    "node": ">=0.8.0"
  },
  "dependencies": {
    "babel-brunch": "^6.0.0",
    "babel-preset-es2015": "^6.0.0",
    "brunch": "^2.0.0",
    "css-brunch": "^1.7.0",
    "clean-css-brunch": "^1.8.0",
    "sass-brunch": "^1.9.1",
    "bower": "^1.7.1",
    "ng-annotate-uglify-js-brunch": "^2.0.0",
    "git-digest-brunch": "^1.0.3"
  },
  "devDependencies": {
    "browser-sync-brunch": "^0.0.8"
  }
}

brunch config contents

exports.config =
  conventions:
    assets: [
      'app/assets/**'
      'bower_components/font-awesome/**'
      '!bower_components/font-awesome/css/**'
      'bower_components/term-hierarchy/assets/**'
    ]
  modules:
    definition: false
    wrapper: false
  paths:
    watched: [
      'app'
    ]
  files:
    javascripts:
      joinTo:
        'js/app.js': 'app/**'
        'js/vendor.js': 'bower_components/**'
      order:
        before: [
          'bower_components/jquery/jquery.js'
        ]
    stylesheets:
      joinTo:
        'css/app.css': /^(app|bower_components)/
  plugins:
    browserSync:
      notify: false
    sass:
      options:
        includePaths: ['bower_components/bootstrap-sass/assets/stylesheets']
    babel:
      ignore: [
        'bower_components/!(term-hierarchy)/**'
      ]

Literally nothing to see in the logs after the initial compilation.

[lucian303]

As a workaround, I just fixed the brunch version to 1.17.19 in package.json.

[yagudaev]

@lucian303 I agree completely. Unlike Ruby/Rails which is another community I’m a part of, NPM, for example, doesn’t list versions of dependencies on the website.

We might just bite the bullet and upgrade to webpack 4.0 as it looks like brunch is dead. Webpack 4.0 has very little config necessary, but still a little bit of work to do