generateFiles doesn't write to outputPath when called inside a watcher

Current Behavior

Calling generateFiles from @nrwl/devkit works fine when doing it once but if you also want to have a watcher listen for file changes it doesn’t create or update the file at the output path when the watcher callback runs.

Expected Behavior

I would expect the same behavior regardless of when generateFiles is called. From my investigations tree.write inside generateFiles runs properly, but the file is never written… I tried looking inside that function to see what is happening but I couldn’t see what is actually writing the file in the first place. I’m not sure if this is a regression or not but most likely isn’t.

Steps to Reproduce

1. Create a .env file with any variable and value
2. Create a .env.d.ts__tmpl__ file in the same scope as the generator index.ts file with the following code:

declare global {
  namespace NodeJS {
    interface ProcessEnv {
      <% for(const prop in env) { -%>
        <%- JSON.stringify(prop) %>: string;
      <% } %>
    }
  }
}
export {};

1. Add a generator with the following code:

import * as dotenv from 'dotenv';
dotenv.config();

import { generateFiles, Tree } from '@nrwl/devkit';
import { output } from '@nrwl/workspace/src/utils/output';
import watch from 'node-watch';

import { NxEnvOptions } from './types';

const NAME = 'nx-env';
const templatesPath = `tools/generators/${NAME}`;

function title(key = '') {
  return [NAME, key].filter(Boolean).join(': ');
}

function createTypeDefinitionFile(tree: Tree) {
  // Load the updated variables into process.env
  dotenv.config();

  const outputPath = '__generated__';

  generateFiles(tree, templatesPath, outputPath, {
    tmpl: '',
    env: process.env,
  });

  output.success({ title: title(`Files generated at: ${outputPath}`) });
}

export default async function (tree: Tree, schema: NxEnvOptions) {
  output.note({ title: title('Generating...') });

  watch('.env', { persistent: true }, () => {
    createTypeDefinitionFile(tree);
  });

  createTypeDefinitionFile(tree);

  return async () => {
    output.note({ title: title('Listening for changes...') });
  };
}

1. Run the generator with nx workspace-generator nx-env
2. Check that the generated .env.d.ts file has been created in the __generated__ folder
3. Add a new variable to .env or change the existing variable name (not value)
4. Notice how the file isn’t updated.

Failure Logs

No errors are thrown.

Environment

 Node : 16.18.0
   OS   : darwin x64
   npm  : 8.19.2
   
   nx : 14.3.2
   @nrwl/angular : 14.3.2
   @nrwl/cypress : 14.3.2
   @nrwl/detox : Not Found
   @nrwl/devkit : 14.3.2
   @nrwl/eslint-plugin-nx : 14.3.2
   @nrwl/express : Not Found
   @nrwl/jest : 14.3.2
   @nrwl/js : Not Found
   @nrwl/linter : 14.3.2
   @nrwl/nest : Not Found
   @nrwl/next : Not Found
   @nrwl/node : Not Found
   @nrwl/nx-cloud : 14.1.1
   @nrwl/nx-plugin : Not Found
   @nrwl/react : Not Found
   @nrwl/react-native : Not Found
   @nrwl/schematics : Not Found
   @nrwl/storybook : 14.3.2
   @nrwl/web : Not Found
   @nrwl/workspace : 14.3.2
   typescript : 4.7.3
   ---------------------------------------
   Community plugins:
   	 @nguniversal/express-engine: 13.0.2
   	 rxjs: 6.6.7
   	 @nguniversal/builders: 14.0.1
   	 @storybook/angular: 6.5.9

[AgentEnder]

You can pass options to execsync to inherit stdio, which is what you want. It should be easy to find on Google/node docs from that.

[skog-newglue]

@AgentEnder Gotcha. Got it working now finally but I found a problem, and I’m not sure if it’s fixable. When you run a generator from within an executor with execSync('nx g @my-org/automation:env-type-def');, any output calls within the generator aren’t logged despite the generator running as intended (I can see that it creates the file I want). Here I would expect to see 2 more logs from the generator but they aren’t there. Is this because it’s running in a different process? And is there any way to fix it?