webpack could use a default index.html

[dt665m]

Seems like there is a prebuilt docs folder with an index.html but the default webpack settings, as is, doesn't load or copy an index.html properly to the served /dist folder. Cloning the repo as of b83b699 or using substrate-ui-new and running the instructions in the Readme doesn't yield a running example. The webpack dev server will respond with a "Cannot /Get" on localhost:8000.

Is this project taking PRs? My suggested fix would be to include the index.html in the root folder of the project and add "html-webpack-plugin" as a dev dependency to automatically move the file upon dev server start. This is what I have done on my side.

[shawntabrizi]

@dt665m Happy to take PRs here.

Can you confirm that you are running a Windows machine? I think the problem only happens on Windows since it does not support normal symlinks. (Windows has their own symlink system)

In general, the docs folder is used to support GitHub pages, which is why it exists, and the dist folder simply symlinks to it to keep it in sync.

There are probably other clever things you can do to support both docs and a normal react project build:
https://stackoverflow.com/questions/41495658/use-custom-build-output-folder-when-using-create-react-app
facebook/create-react-app#1354 (comment)

Let me know if this all makes sense.

[dt665m]

@shawntabrizi I'm actually on macos, but I think I see what is going on here. This is probably my own mistake. I might have destroyed the dist folder out of habit when I was trying to do a clean build, which killed the symlink.

I suspect this will actually cause some issues with windows though. Most common setups involve the approach I previously mentioned, where an index.html is maintained in project root and copied over to a build path by webpack. /dist is also in .gitignore. I believe wasm-pack generates a scaffolding just like this.

I'll prepare a PR for you to take a look.