Silent fail when fs.inotify.max_user_watches is exceeded

[SpaceK33z]

Docker container configuration

• Webpack 1.10.3
• Node v0.10.25
• Ubuntu 15.04

Host configuration

• Docker 1.0.1
• Ubuntu 14.04

Issue

Running webpack --watch in docker container successfully performs one build and then exits with exit code 0 (success).

Expectation

Some kind of error code and a return code != 0 if max_user_watches is exceeded.

Workaround

Increasing /proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_user_watches on the host system fixes the problem.

Moved from https://github.com/webpack/webpack/issues/1281

[msakrejda]

I ran into this as well, but in the context of webpack HMR, where this leads webpack into a state where it's watching some files but not others. This was extremely frustrating and time-consuming to track down.

I'm happy to try to contribute a patch with some guidance. Any suggestions as to where to start? And is the particular issue that I ran into a watchpack or webpack problem?

[zzacharo]

Hey, I ran into a probably similar problem for macos. Running watch in directories that have symlinks doesn't do anything. The directories to be watched are correct but changing files in that directories doesn't trigger any new build. Could be this related to macos watchers configuration or watchpack/chokidar?