2.7 KiB
#watchexec
Software development often involves running the same commands over and over. Boring!
watchexec is a simple, standalone tool that watches a path and runs a command whenever it detects modifications.
Example use cases:
- Automatically run unit tests
- Run linters/syntax checkers
##Features
- Simple invocation and use
- Runs on OS X, Linux and Windows
- Monitors current directory and all subdirectories for changes (use
--watchto override)- Uses most efficient event polling mechanism for your platform (except for BSD)
- Coalesces multiple filesystem events into one, for editors that use swap/backup files during saving
- By default, uses
.gitignoreto determine which files to ignore notifications for - Support for watching files with a specific extension
- Support for filtering/ignoring events based on glob patterns
- Optionally clears screen between executions
- Optionally restarts the command with every modification (good for servers)
- Does not require a language runtime
##Anti-Features
- Not tied to any particular language or ecosystem
- Does not require a cryptic command line involving
xargs
##Usage Examples
Watch all JavaScript, CSS and HTML files in the current directory and all subdirectories for changes, running make when a change is detected:
$ watchexec --exts js,css,html make
Watch all files below src and subdirectories for changes, running make test when a change is detected:
$ watchexec --watch src make test
Call make test when any file changes in this directory/subdirectory, except for everything below target:
$ watchexec -i target make test
Call/restart python server.py when any Python file in the current directory (and all subdirectories) changes:
$ watchexec -e py -r python server.py
Run make when any file changes, using the .gitignore file in the current directory to filter:
$ watchexec make
##Installation
###Cargo
$ cargo install watchexec
###OS X with Homebrew
$ brew install https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mattgreen/watchexec/master/pkg/brew/watchexec.rb
###Linux
For now, use the GitHub Releases tab to obtain the binary. PRs for packaging in various distros are welcomed.
###Windows
Use the GitHub Releases tab to obtain the binary. In the future, I'll look at adding it to Chocolatey.
##Credits
- notify for doing most of the heavy-lifting