Nodemon not restarting (not recognising file changes) in WSL2 - Ubuntu-18.04, when project directory is in Windows filesystem.

• Versions: node@v16.7.0, linux@5.10.16.3-microsoft-standard-WSL2
• nodemon -v: 2.0.12
• Command you ran: nodemon app.js

Expected behaviour

When I change something (adding console.log('')) to app.js the server should restart.

Actual behaviour

Nodemon doesn’t do anything

Things to note

This worked last night, and when I logged back on to my PC this morning, it’s just stopped registering file changes. I’m at a real loss here.

❯ nodemon app.js
[nodemon] 2.0.12
[nodemon] to restart at any time, enter `rs`
[nodemon] watching path(s): *.*
[nodemon] watching extensions: js,mjs,json
[nodemon] starting `node app.js`

NodeJS server started!

And that’s it. I can run rs, to manually restart the node server, which works fine:

rs
[nodemon] starting `node app.js`

NodeJS server started!

But no matter which file, how many, or how much I change a file, there’s no automatic restarts.

[resonancedesigns]

I can replicate this on my system with what I believe is in a similar WSL2 environment, I had the same issue. A simple work-around for me was to add the -L (legacy watch) argument to the command.

[wazp]

I think this might be related to inotify not working between the linux filesystem and windows right now. There’s an open bug about it over at the WSL repo: https://github.com/microsoft/WSL/issues/4739