Error: Port 8080 is not open, could not start firestore emulator.

[REQUIRED] Environment info

firebase-tools: 7.6.1

Platform: macOS Mojave 10.14.6

[REQUIRED] Test case

🤷‍♂ It needs to work or my functions can’t query the firestore to get my data…

[REQUIRED] Steps to reproduce

Run the following command: firebase serve --only firestore

[REQUIRED] Expected behavior

Expected behavior is to have the firestore emulated locally so I can preview my project before pushing it live.

[REQUIRED] Actual behavior

The server refuses to start because it claims that Port 8080 is not open despite the fact that I’m not using that port, I’m using 5000.

It worked fine about 3 weeks ago before I went on vacation, but today when I returned to work, it’s refusing.

PAR-MBP-K:functions oesterkilde$ firebase serve --only firestore --debug
[2019-10-21T13:53:26.421Z] ----------------------------------------------------------------------
[2019-10-21T13:53:26.424Z] Command:       /Users/oesterkilde/.nvm/versions/node/v10.16.0/bin/node /Users/oesterkilde/.nvm/versions/node/v10.16.0/bin/firebase serve --only firestore --debug
[2019-10-21T13:53:26.424Z] CLI Version:   7.6.1
[2019-10-21T13:53:26.424Z] Platform:      darwin
[2019-10-21T13:53:26.424Z] Node Version:  v10.16.0
[2019-10-21T13:53:26.425Z] Time:          Mon Oct 21 2019 15:53:26 GMT+0200 (Central European Summer Time)
[2019-10-21T13:53:26.425Z] ----------------------------------------------------------------------
[2019-10-21T13:53:26.425Z] 

Error: Port 8080 is not open, could not start firestore emulator.

[Kosai106]

Out of frustration I mistyped my command and wrote firebase serve instead of yarn serve (Which is aliased as firebase serve --only firestore) and somehow it works… I just spent 7 hours trying to get this to work.

[samtstern]

@Kosai106 firebase serve was originally a hosting-only command and before we came up with emulators:start we tried to bolt some emulator functionality onto serve. So, if I remember correctly, firebase serve by default starts only the Hosting and Functions emulators while firebase serve --only firestore (or --only database) is an opt-in command that will start the Firestore or Realtime Database emulators. Each emulator has its own port and this is why you only saw 8080 coming into play with you added the --only command.

I would recommend using emulators:start going forward I think you will find the behavior clearer. We are trying to make this recommendation more apparently in https://github.com/firebase/firebase-tools/pull/1732