How is ember-welcome-page/ember serve's index.html so different from dist/index.html?

Newbie question:

How does ember serve with ember-welcome-page serve up such a different landing page than dist/index.html?

  1. ember new new-app
  2. ember serve (look at source of http://localhost:4200)
  3. compare with source in dist/index.html

They are so different!

How did ember server + welcome page replace the index.html?

Now if I wanted to distribute exactly ember serve+ember-welcome-page (including construction.png etc etc) how would I create the dist/ directory?

ember build -prod gives a dist/ directory without ember-welcome-page’s welcome.html + contstuction.png etc

The welcome page is aimed at first time Ember developers to point them at some good starting resources. It isn’t intended to be part of your actual production app.

Oh I see - ember-welcome-page is not a frontend app - but uses Express middleware to replace index.html.

Learners, not being familiar with addon+serverMiddleware, might find it a bit disconcerting (“copy dist/ folder to your website”) does not give the same result as localhost:4200. I know I was surprised.

Perhaps the quick start guide should include a pointer that what you see in “ember serve” is due to Express+middleware and on a web server you will (correctly) see a blank page.

We’re working on a new ember-welcome-page iteration and this is one of the constraints.