After upgrading webpack-dev-server from v3 to v4, I found two odd inconsistencies.

1. webpack-dev-server publicPath does not work anymore, without pairing it with the new static option.
   • In the past, this was enough to make things work:

   {
     // ...
     devServer: {
       publicPath: '/'
     }
   }
   

   • But now this is required instead:

   {
     // ...
     devServer: {
       devMiddleware: {
         publicPath: '/'
       },
       static: [
         {
           directory: context.replace(/\//g, '\\'),
           publicPath: '/'
         }
       ]
     }
   }
   

2. The second problem is also visible in the code above. You can see in the new version above that my context has a weird hack: I have to replace forward slashes with backward slashes on Windows - context.replace(/\//g, '\\'). If I don't do that, I am punished by an inaccurate URL detection algorithm. Since forward slashes are perfectly fine on Windows, it should not complain about it not being a directory. Windows' own tools all think it is a directory, but webpack-dev-server does not:

   Error: Using a URL as static.directory is not supported
       at getStaticItem (c:\thecode\node_modules\webpack-dev-server\lib\Server.js:557:15)
       at c:\thecode\node_modules\webpack-dev-server\lib\Server.js:1046:16
       at Array.map (<anonymous>)
       at Server.normalizeOptions (c:\thecode\node_modules\webpack-dev-server\lib\Server.js:1041:39)
       at Server.start (c:\thecode\node_modules\webpack-dev-server\lib\Server.js:2252:16)
       at Command.<anonymous> (c:\thecode\node_modules\@webpack-cli\serve\lib\index.js:242:38)
       at async Promise.all (index 1)
       at async Command.<anonymous> (c:\thecode\node_modules\webpack-cli\lib\webpack-cli.js:1672:7)
   

My setup:

webpack: 5
OS: Windows 10
Node: 16

Is there something I am doing wrong here? Is that documented/expected behavior? Or is it something I should file on their Github issue page?

Workaround for (2): the URL problem can be fixed via path.resolve. I.e.: directory: path.resolve(context).