poll-pull-reinstall-restart

A daemon that watches a git remote and, on each poll: pulls, reinstalls dependencies if the working tree changed, and restarts a sequence of package.json scripts.

Useful for running a project on a server where deployments happen by pushing to a git branch.

Requirements

• Node.js >= 22
• git on PATH
• ssh-keygen on PATH (only if generating a new SSH deploy key)
• nvm (only if using NVM_AUTO_INSTALL or relying on .nvmrc)

Usage

1. Create a config (--init)

Run once in a project directory to write a .pprrc file:

npx poll-pull-reinstall-restart --init

Add --interactive (or -i) to be prompted for each setting:

npx poll-pull-reinstall-restart --init -i

To clone a repository first, pass the URL:

npx poll-pull-reinstall-restart --init [email protected]:user/repo.git

.pprrc is a dotenv file. Commit it or keep it local — it has no secrets unless you set SSH_KEY_PATH.

2. Run the daemon

Once a .pprrc exists (or the required environment variables are set), start the daemon:

npx poll-pull-reinstall-restart

On startup it optionally runs nvm install (if NVM_AUTO_INSTALL=true and .nvmrc is present), optionally runs corepack enable, installs dependencies, runs any ONCE_SCRIPTS to completion, then enters the poll loop. On each poll it runs git pull; if the working tree changed it re-runs nvm/corepack, reinstalls, and restarts RESTART_SCRIPTS.

If NTFY_TOPIC is set, lifecycle events (service started, update detected, restart failures, git pull failures, and shutdown) are pushed as ntfy notifications to that topic.

Configuration

Reads from .pprrc in the project root (dotenv format), falling back to environment variables.

| Variable | Required | Default | Description | | ------------------ | -------- | ----------------- | --------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | RESTART_SCRIPTS | yes | — | Comma-separated package.json script names to run on each (re)start | | ONCE_SCRIPTS | no | — | Comma-separated scripts to run once on startup | | POLL_INTERVAL | no | 60 | Seconds between polls | | SSH_KEY_PATH | no | — | Path to SSH private key for git authentication | | INSTALL_DEV_PKGS | no | false | Install devDependencies on each reinstall | | NVM_AUTO_INSTALL | no | true | Run nvm install on startup and on each changed pull (requires .nvmrc and nvm) | | COREPACK_ENABLE | no | true | Run corepack enable after each Node version switch | | SERVICE_NAME | no | — | Label prepended to ntfy notification titles, e.g. [my-app] Service started | | NTFY_TOPIC | no | — | ntfy topic to send lifecycle notifications to | | NTFY_SERVER | no | https://ntfy.sh | ntfy server base URL |

CLI flags

--init             Write a .pprrc file and exit
--interactive, -i  Prompt for settings interactively
--verbose, -v      Increase log output