Provide useful messages for missing files

[gaearon]

• index.html
• favicon.ico
• src/index.js

They are all required, and we should crash early with a descriptive message if they are not found.

(Probably we could make favicon optional but then it would be hard to guess where to put it. I see no harm in forcing it to be there since any real website needs it anyway.)

[apoorvnandan]

Hey, I would like to work on this but I need some guidance. Will using npm file-exists before opening the browser do the job?

var fileExists = require('file-exists');
if (!fileExists("/index.html") || !fileExists("/favicon.ico") || !fileExists("/src/index.html")) {
  console.log("File missing");
}
else {
  console.log(chalk.cyan('Starting the development server...'));
  openBrowser();
}

[gaearon]

I would suggest to try implementing something that works and feels good. When we get the right UX we can choose to make changes to the actual implementation.

[christophior]

Might take a look at this as well, I see that we already have paths that we're getting in the webpack configs so I was thinking of pulling those out since a lot of it seems like redundant data so that I could also use that in checking whether the required files exist.

[vincaslt]

I guess something like that could work, tell me if it should be improved. Maybe move required file definitions to somewhat more manageable place?

[delorge]

Is it easier to check that file exists via access check? Should work with any npm version. Moreover, no extra dependencies needed.

UPD: we can basically crash on errors and warn on missing favicon

[gaearon]

This should be fixed in 0.4.2.