From 8be7e567e5954ee8910160bbde9df313fd0a81ac Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: Rob Wu <rob@robwu.nl>
Date: Sun, 26 Apr 2026 19:05:05 +0200
Subject: [PATCH] fix: Avoid auto-reload for recently created source directory

Watchpack has a bug that caused it to dispatch change events for files
that were created recently (up to 2 seconds before now). This can
trigger an unwanted auto-reload, e.g. in the scenario of an extension
developer building an extension and using `web-ext run` to immediately
launch that built package.

Fixing this bug caused test.cli.run-target-chromium.js to time out
because the "with auto-reload" test got stuck, because it waited until
"The extension will reload if any source file changes" was logged before
writing a file to trigger auto-reload, but that message was logged
before the watcher was registered. To fix that test issue, move the
logging after initializing the reload strategy.
---
 src/cmd/run.js | 4 ++--
 src/watcher.js | 4 +++-
 2 files changed, 5 insertions(+), 3 deletions(-)

diff --git a/src/cmd/run.js b/src/cmd/run.js
index d95b32168a..fbbfffb555 100644
--- a/src/cmd/run.js
+++ b/src/cmd/run.js
@@ -206,8 +206,6 @@ export default async function run(
   if (noReload) {
     log.info('Automatic extension reloading has been disabled');
   } else {
-    log.info('The extension will reload if any source file changes');
-
     reloadStrategy({
       extensionRunner,
       sourceDir,
@@ -217,6 +215,8 @@ export default async function run(
       ignoreFiles,
       noInput,
     });
+
+    log.info('The extension will reload if any source file changes');
   }
 
   return extensionRunner;
diff --git a/src/watcher.js b/src/watcher.js
index d4a784b474..c2e4bde76a 100644
--- a/src/watcher.js
+++ b/src/watcher.js
@@ -63,7 +63,9 @@ export default function onSourceChange({
     files: watchedFiles,
     directories: watchedDirs,
     missing: [],
-    startTime: Date.now(),
+    // startTime: Date.now(), is explicitly NOT set because it causes onChange
+    // to be emitted if the files were created shortly before now!
+    // See https://github.com/webpack/watchpack/issues/295
   });
 
   // TODO: support interrupting the watcher on Windows.