#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

##Status

Beta: CLI arguments stabilizing

##Features

• Simple invocation and use
• Runs on OS X, Linux and Windows
• Monitors path specified on command line for changes
  • 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 .gitignore to filter for changes
• 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

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

###OS X with Homebrew

$ brew install https://raw.githubusercontent.com/mattgreen/watchexec/master/pkg/brew/watchexec.rb

##Credits

• notify for doing most of the heavy-lifting