AutoWatch doesn't work

If I run:

karma start karma.conf.js --auto-watch --browsers Chrome --runner-port 9090 --no-single-run

Karma doesn’t react to file changes. Here are relevant files: package.json:

{
    "name": "test-app",
    "version": "0.1.0",
    "devDependencies": {
        "connect-modrewrite": "0.5.11",
        "findup-sync": "0.1.2",
        "grunt": "0.4.2",
        "grunt-angular-templates": "0.5.1",
        "grunt-autoprefixer": "0.6.4",
        "grunt-check-dependencies": "0.3.0",
        "grunt-concurrent": "0.4.3",
        "grunt-continue": "0.0.1",
        "grunt-contrib-clean": "0.5.0",
        "grunt-contrib-compass": "0.7.0",
        "grunt-contrib-concat": "0.3.0",
        "grunt-contrib-connect": "0.6.0",
        "grunt-contrib-copy": "0.5.0",
        "grunt-contrib-htmlmin": "0.1.3",
        "grunt-contrib-jshint": "0.7.2",
        "grunt-contrib-uglify": "0.3.1",
        "grunt-contrib-watch": "0.5.3",
        "grunt-csso": "0.5.3",
        "grunt-ddescribe-iit": "0.0.4",
        "grunt-defs": "0.6.1",
        "grunt-jsonlint": "1.0.4",
        "grunt-karma": "0.6.2",
        "grunt-merge-conflict": "0.0.2",
        "grunt-newer": "0.6.1",
        "grunt-ng-annotate": "0.0.4",
        "grunt-notify": "0.2.17",
        "grunt-protractor-runner": "0.2.1",
        "grunt-rev": "0.1.0",
        "grunt-shell": "0.6.2",
        "grunt-usemin": "2.0.2",
        "jasmine-reporters": "0.2.1",
        "karma": "0.10.9",
        "karma-chrome-launcher": "0.1.2",
        "karma-coverage": "0.1.4",
        "karma-firefox-launcher": "0.1.3",
        "karma-jasmine": "0.1.5",
        "karma-junit-reporter": "0.2.1",
        "karma-ng-json2js-preprocessor": "0.0.5",
        "karma-opera-launcher": "0.1.0",
        "libxmljs": "0.8.1",
        "load-grunt-tasks": "0.2.1",
        "protractor": "0.16.1"
    }
}

karma.conf.js:

'use strict';

module.exports = function (config) {
    require('./karma-shared.conf')(config);

    config.set({
        // list of files / patterns to load in the browser
        files: config.files.concat([
            'app/vendor/l20n-*/l20n.js',
            'app/vendor/jquery-*/jquery.js',
            'app/vendor/lodash-*/lodash.custom.js',
            'app/vendor/modernizr-*/modernizr-custom.js',
            'app/vendor/bootstrap-*/bootstrap.js',
            'app/vendor/bootstrap-tagsinput/bootstrap-tagsinput.js',
            'app/vendor/typeahead.js-*/typeahead.js',
            'app/vendor/seadragon/seadragon.js',

            'app/vendor/angular-*/angular/angular.js',
            'app/vendor/angular-*/angular-*/angular-*.js',

            'app/vendor/placeholders-*/placeholders-*.js',
            'app/vendor/ng-l20n/ng-l20n.js',
            'app/vendor/google-analytics/tracking-code.js',
            'app/vendor/angulartics-0.8.5/angulartics.js',
            'app/vendor/ng-tags-input-8d243e5ad0-fork/ng-tags-input.js',

            'app/lib/polyfill.defs.js',
            'app/lib/key_codes.defs.js',
            'app/lib/jquery.dotdotdot-1.5.6-modified.defs.js',

            'app/cbn-modules/**/*.defs.js',
            'app/app.defs.js',

            'test/templates.js',
        ]).concat(config.bottomFiles),

        exclude: config.exclude.concat([
            'app/**/*.min.js',
        ]),
    });
};

karma-shared.conf.js:

'use strict';

module.exports = function (config) {
    var preprocessors = config.preprocessors;
    preprocessors['**/*.json'] = 'json2js';

    config.set({
        frameworks: ['jasmine'],
        basePath: '',
        files: [
            'test/settings.js',
        ],
        bottomFiles: [
            'test/mocks-inlined/*.json',
            'test/vendor/**/*.js',
            'test/{lib,mock,unit}/**/*.defs.js',
        ],
        exclude: [],
        preprocessors: preprocessors,
        plugins: config.plugins.concat([
            'karma-ng-json2js-preprocessor',
        ]),
        reporters: ['progress'],
        port: 8080,
        runnerPort: 9100,
        colors: true,
        logLevel: config.LOG_INFO,
        autoWatch: false,
        browsers: ['Chrome', 'Firefox'],
        captureTimeout: 60000,
        singleRun: true,
    });
};

Watched *.defs.js files are generated via grunt-defs. Once a file is generated, Karma doesn’t pick up the change and doesn’t dispatch the tests.

[nazandrey]

Hello all! I was searching why karma doesnt reload when file is changed. Now after 3-5 days of deep research i finally found a reason for this.

It’s not autoWatch, nor usePolling, nor singleRun, nor atomic_save for me.

It’s glob characters in the full path to watched file (in my case it was like C:\!JS\foo\bar.js, notice ‘!’ in the beggining of JS). Reason for this here (https://github.com/paulmillr/chokidar/issues/300 (issue from chokidar, which karma has in dependencies)). So consider to check names of your current working directory and files for ‘!’, ‘*’, ‘[’, ‘{’ and etc.

Hope it helps to save a lot of time for someone because i would be really glad to find my message in the past.

p.s. I decided to write message exactly here because it was the most common page which i was landing during my research 😃

[pallogu]

I had the same issue on Intellij. It looks like you have to disable Use ‘safe write’ setting.