serdev

A bundler-independent development server for Node.js.

The problem: I have a project with many components each with their own build-step. The solution: serdev builds then serves components based on the requested route and watches for changes to trigger a rebuild.

$ npm install --save serdev

Example

Imagine we have a monorepo with our development server at the root.

server.js

import * as serdev from "serdev";

serdev.listen({
  // Environment variables passed to build scripts.
  env: {
    RUST_BACKTRACE: "1",
  },
  // Additional headers sent for all requests.
  headers: {
    "Cross-Origin-Opener-Policy": "same-origin",
    "Cross-Origin-Embedder-Policy": "require-corp",
  },
  // A component can be one of the following:
  // - A build script which produces artifacts. The artifacts are then associated with a route in
  //   the `routes` config.
  // - A server (with an optional build script) which listens on a specified port. The port is
  //   then associated with a route in the `routes` config.
  components: {
  	// Shared UI library
    ui: {
      // The `cwd` (current working directory) for our build script.
      dir: "./ui",
      build: "esbuild --entry-points=src/index.ts --outdir=out --bundle --write",
      // Watch directories (relative to `dir`) to trigger a rebuild.
      watch: ["src"],
    },
    // Website frontend
    website: {
      dir: "./website",
      build: "node scripts/build.js",
      watch: ["src"],
      // Define a dependency on the `ui` component. Dependencies get built before their parent.
      deps: ["ui"],
    },
    // A Rust/WASM app
    app: {
      dir: "./app",
      build: "cargo build --target=wasm32-unknown-unknown",
      watch: ["src"],
    },
    // A Rust server
    api: {
      dir: "./api",
      build: "cargo build --features=dev",
      // The command to start the server.
      start: "target/debug/blob",
      port: 8001,
      watch: ["src"],
    },
    // A Node.js server
    cdn: {
      dir: "./cdn",
      start: "node server.js",
      port: 8002,
    },
  },
  routes: {
  	// Serve a static asset.
    "/favicon.ico": "./website/favicon.ico",
    // Serve a component artifact - the first element defines the component and the second is the
    // path to the artifact.
    "/app.js": ["app", "./app/out/index.js"],
    // Proxy requests to a server.
    "/api/*": ["api"],
    // Dynamically resolve a file path based on the request parameters.
    "/assets/*rest": (x) => `./assets/${x.rest}`,
  },
});

Notes

serdev uses process groups to manage/kill child processes which aren't supported on Windows (as far as I know). Maybe there is a work around?