How to watch for changes of static files?

I have some static HTML files in /public - if I change a file, and reload the browser, the file is not updated. I need to restart the server or a bundle rebuild to get the new version.

I tried without success:

```
devServer: {
contentBase: ['./dist', './public'],
watchContentBase: true,
hot: true
},
```

Start by reproducing the problem with a static HTML file in /public and the shown devServer configuration, then inspect how the development server serves and watches that directory. Done means changing a file in /public and reloading the browser shows the updated content without restarting the server or rebuilding the bundle.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.