Refreshing external module after changes with ionic serve

Ionic Framework ionic-v3
#1

I am starting a project that requires multiple distinct ionic apps that share a significant amount of code.

I am trying to figure out an optimal way of organizing my code in order to streamline development. I have set up my project with a folder structure similar to this:

  • my-project
    • apps
      • app-1
      • app-2
    • core

/apps/app-1 and /apps/app-2 are each complete Ionic2 apps.
/core holds an Angular module with components, directives, providers, etc., that are to be used by app-1 and app-2.

I am importing components in app-1 using relative import paths such as:

import {CoreDataProvider, CoreComponent1} from "../../../../../core";

This basically works, but I have some problems, in particular when using live-reload with ionic serve.

In order to streamline my workflow, I need to be able to save changes to my code in the core module, and see the effect of those changes in my browser. Currently this does not work.

If I save changes in core and reload my browser, the changes are not reflected, because the ionic serve watcher does not see the changes outside of the apps/app1 folder.

Even more problematic is the fact that changes in the core module are not picked up even if I trigger a rebuild in the app-1 folder by saving a code file there.

  • in terminal
    • $ cd apps/app-1
    • $ ionic serve
  • make and save a change to a component or provider in /core
  • make and save a change to a file in /apps/app1
  • observe a new build triggered by ionic serve and the app reload in the browser
  • the changes to the component are not reflected in the new build
  • go back to terminal, hit ctrl-c and run a new $ ionic serve
  • the changes to the component are now reflected in the new build

So it seems that the external core module is getting cached as a part of the build process and doesn’t get refreshed by ionic serve when it is changed.

Is there any way I can fix this, perhaps with modifications to the build scripts? Ideally I would like to figure out how to have changes in the core folder trigger a new build with the changes reflected. However, even if the watcher wasn’t observing the core folder but I could trigger a build by re-saving a file inside my app folder and then see the changes from the core module, it would be a big improvement.

Any help with this would be greatly appreciated.