# Elm-watch in action

**URL:** <https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/elm-watch-in-action/8844>\
**Category:** Show and Tell\
**Created:** [December 22, 2022, 6:37pm UTC](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/elm-watch-in-action/8844 "2022-12-22T18:37:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 8\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![cbrake](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/user_avatar/discourse.elm-lang.org/cbrake/32/438_2.png) [@cbrake](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/u/cbrake)\
**Post date:** [December 22, 2022, 6:37pm UTC](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/elm-watch-in-action/8844/1 "2022-12-22T18:37:00Z")

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An example of elm-watch in action:

[![](https://img.youtube.com/vi/_Nrs2_l62_Q/maxresdefault.jpg "Hot reloading the Simple IoT UI") ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_Nrs2_l62_Q)

The aha moment for me came when I realized elm-watch is not a traditional dev server – in only watches, builds, and provides a websocket port that handles the hot reloading. This means you can continue to deploy assets through the backend during development – greatly simplifies things.

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**Author:** ![kanishka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3e96dc/32.png) [@kanishka](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/u/kanishka)\
**Post date:** [December 23, 2022, 3:41am UTC](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/elm-watch-in-action/8844/2 "2022-12-23T03:41:41Z")

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We’re switching from webpack in watch mode + phoenix live reload of assets to vite in watch mode + phoenix live reload at work. I was curious about elm-watch+esbuild or watchexec+elm make+esbuild, but we haven’t pursued those alternatives yet.

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**Author:** ![kanishka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/k/3e96dc/32.png) [@kanishka](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/u/kanishka)\
**Post date:** [December 24, 2022, 4:33am UTC](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/elm-watch-in-action/8844/3 "2022-12-24T04:33:15Z")

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Our build is still slow even with vite (3-5 seconds per compile and reload cycle). In our larger apps, I am considering having a way where we can comment out all pages except one to shrink bundle size that vite has to reload when developing.

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**Author:** ![cbrake](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/user_avatar/discourse.elm-lang.org/cbrake/32/438_2.png) [@cbrake](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/u/cbrake)\
**Post date:** [December 24, 2022, 3:18pm UTC](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/elm-watch-in-action/8844/4 "2022-12-24T15:18:16Z")

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My Elm app is not huge, but I really like the build times with elm-watch – typically in 100ms range …

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**Author:** ![lydell](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/user_avatar/discourse.elm-lang.org/lydell/32/178_2.png) [@lydell](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/u/lydell)\
**Post date:** [December 30, 2022, 8:05pm UTC](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/elm-watch-in-action/8844/5 "2022-12-30T20:05:41Z")

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Nice video! 🙇‍♂️

Hurts to see those broken emojis in the terminal though 😅

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**Author:** ![cbrake](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/user_avatar/discourse.elm-lang.org/cbrake/32/438_2.png) [@cbrake](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/u/cbrake)\
**Post date:** [January 2, 2023, 3:24pm UTC](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/elm-watch-in-action/8844/6 "2023-01-02T15:24:37Z")

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> [@lydell](#):
>
> Hurts to see those broken emojis in the terminal though 😅

I was so thrilled with how it worked, I never noticed that detail 🙂. Wonder if that is missing fonts, or if something messed up with terminal/tmux config …?

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**Author:** ![lydell](https://yyz1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/user_avatar/discourse.elm-lang.org/lydell/32/178_2.png) [@lydell](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/u/lydell)\
**Post date:** [January 2, 2023, 4:28pm UTC](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/elm-watch-in-action/8844/7 "2023-01-02T16:28:20Z")

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The ✅ emoji shows up in your browser so you seem to have an appropriate font somewhere. Maybe the terminal isn’t using it.

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**Author:** ![system](https://canada1.discourse-cdn.com/flex035/uploads/elm_lang/original/1X/50a05e53677a2c3b47776d7abd0f113eb50193a1.png) [@system](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/u/system)\
**Post date:** [January 12, 2023, 4:28pm UTC](https://discourse.elm-lang.org/t/elm-watch-in-action/8844/8 "2023-01-12T16:28:35Z")

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