Angular 4 - Could not resolve submodule for routing

Question

I'm building a webapp with Angular 4. I have a top-level routing module and a separate routing module for each submodule (e.g. HomeModule).

This is my top-level routing configuration:

export const ROUTES: Routes = [
  {path: '', loadChildren: './home#HomeModule'},
  {path: '**', component: NotFoundComponent},
];

When I run ng server, I get a strange error, that module home was not found. The app does not work in the browser.

The strange part is the following: When a file is changed and webpack recompiles the project, everything works just fine and the routing works.
The error does only appear when I'm running ng serve.

This is the error I get when I'm running ng serve, not when the project is recompiled because of a file change:

ERROR in Error: Could not resolve module ./home relative to /path/to/my/project/src/app/app.module.ts
    at StaticSymbolResolver.getSymbolByModule (/path/to/my/project/node_modules/@angular/compiler/bundles/compiler.umd.js:31884:30)
    at StaticReflector.resolveExternalReference (/path/to/my/project/node_modules/@angular/compiler/bundles/compiler.umd.js:30350:62)
    at parseLazyRoute (/path/to/my/project/node_modules/@angular/compiler/bundles/compiler.umd.js:28616:55)
    at listLazyRoutes (/path/to/my/project/node_modules/@angular/compiler/bundles/compiler.umd.js:28578:36)
    at visitLazyRoute (/path/to/my/project/node_modules/@angular/compiler/bundles/compiler.umd.js:29995:47)
    at AotCompiler.listLazyRoutes (/path/to/my/project/node_modules/@angular/compiler/bundles/compiler.umd.js:29963:20)
    at AngularCompilerProgram.listLazyRoutes (/path/to/my/project/node_modules/@angular/compiler-cli/src/transformers/program.js:157:30)
    at Function.NgTools_InternalApi_NG_2.listLazyRoutes (/path/to/my/project/node_modules/@angular/compiler-cli/src/ngtools_api.js:44:36)
    at AngularCompilerPlugin._getLazyRoutesFromNgtools (/path/to/my/project/node_modules/@ngtools/webpack/src/angular_compiler_plugin.js:247:66)
    at Promise.resolve.then.then (/path/to/my/project/node_modules/@ngtools/webpack/src/angular_compiler_plugin.js:538:50)
    at <anonymous>
    at process._tickCallback (internal/process/next_tick.js:188:7)

Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

I was using the absolute path convention: app/home#HomeModule and it wasn't working.

I then tried the relative path convention: ./home#HomeModule and it worked.

... in the CLI, the paths to lazy routes should be relative from the file you're in

Source

---

I followed this Tutorial and it used the absolute path convention and it worked.

Would love to know why the inconsistency...

---

UPDATE:

As Friedrich mentioned, to make it work using an Absolute Path, update src/tsconfig.app.json as follows:

{
  ...,
  "compilerOptions": {
    ...,
    baseUrl: "./"
  }
}