Yes, I did try watchify but encountered some major errors during usage that made me give up. I might give it another go and see if it is solved now.
Ah, it never even occurred to me to look for something like browserify-hmr, will definitely try this out!
Re:Tips and tricks in using Webpack
by 91bananas on Wednesday December 21, 2016 @12:50PM
(#13231055)
I've been running browserify under grunt and by itself, both using watchify, and I have no complaints. I came from just grunt, and a bunch of different tasks like concat, uglify, etc. Browserify has been a revelation, way faster compilation times, way less config, way fewer installed packages. Definitely give it a go again.
I think one of Webpack's benefits is that this stuff is all bundled with it, so everyone's using it but with browserify you need to go out and find these solutions yourself
[1]: https://www.npmjs.com/package/watchify
[2]: https://www.npmjs.com/package/browserify-hmr