--host argument in CLI

[meowgorithm]

It would be very useful to be able to bind the server to something other than localhost (0.0.0.0, for example) to allow other devices on the network to reach the dev server.

A common use case would be for testing on mobile devices.

[Kagami]

👍
Seems like it was already done by @wrobel in his fork: https://github.com/wrobel/webpack-dev-server/tree/feature/variablehostname
Also it's a good pratice to bind dev servers only to localhost by default (now webpack-dev-server listen on 0.0.0.0) because of the security measurements.

[meowgorithm]

Oh, good to know! Would love to see this merged in.

And I agree completely about defaulting to localhost.

[madebyherzblut]

We are using webpack inside a virtual machine and it would be nice to bind it something else than localhost. So 👍

/edit: Never mind, I just realized the option is already available as of 1.7. Thanks!

[Kagami]

This feature was already merged and released, see: https://github.com/webpack/webpack-dev-server/commits/master (PR #83).

[meowgorithm]

@Kagami when can we expect a release to NPM?

[Kagami]

I think it was already realesed: https://www.npmjs.com/package/webpack-dev-server (1.7.0)

[meowgorithm]

@Kagami Ah, fantastic, looks like it just went up. Thanks!

[wrobel]

Eh... I don't think my commit was ready for pulling :) Without actually transporting the hostname to the express server in the listen() call it will probably not bind to another host name.

This is probably required in line 114:

new Server(webpack(wpOpt), options).listen(argv.port, argv.host, function(err) {...

I'm sorry for leaving this unfinished. It was just a short attempt but I soon realized that I need a different approach to get the webpack-dev-server up and running.