Nodemon - exclusion of files

In order to make NodeMon ignore a bunch of files from monitoring, you can start it as

nodemon --ignore PATTERN [--ignore PATTERN2]

where PATTERN is the name of a specific file, directory, or wildcard pattern. Make sure that if you use a wildcard, it is escaped.

For example

nodemon --ignore 'lib/*.js' --ignore README

Alternatively, if you want to configure that behaviour instead, try creating a nodemon.json file in your current working directory, or your home directory. You can configure ignoring some files by adding something like the following to this config file:

{   
    "ignore": ["lib/*.js", "README"] 
}

Refer the README file at https://github.com/remy/nodemon for more details.

You can add nodemon configuration within package.json file For example:

{
  "name": "nlabel",
  "version": "0.0.1",
   // other regular stuff


  "nodemonConfig": {
    "ignore": ["public/data/*.json", "public/javascripts/*.js"]
  },


  "author": "@sziraqui",
  "license": "GPL-3.0"
}

The key must be "nodemonConfig". Ignore rules can be specified as array of globs or complete filenames

More info: https://github.com/remy/nodemon#packagejson

For me (Mac and nodemon 1.18.3), the only way to ignore entire directories is to run e.g.

nodemon --ignore "**/old/**"

with the double quote and **. The config file won't work.

I have set up an alias like this:

alias nm='nodemon server.js -i "**/old/**" -i "**/img/**"'

Check what files are monitored by running

DEBUG=nodemon:watch nodemon server.js -i "**/old/**" -i "**/img/**"

-i is an alternative to --ignore. Check out the available parameters with nodemon --help