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

Learning Team
1

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

2

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.

3

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.

4

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