watchthis

Run a command on file system changes.

Isn't there enough of "watchers" already? There is, but I failed to find a small one that doesn't react erratically on a big amount of file system changes.

$ npm install watchthis

• Watches directories recursively.
• Has post-run hooks.
• anymatch style exclude patterns
• Debounces events.
• Ignores all new events while a user-provided command is running (if there were changes during the run, it (by default, but it's configurable) reruns the command 1 time once more).
• Uses chokidar under the hood.

Requirements

• Nodejs 12+

Examples

Watch the current dir & print "hello, dude" on each change:

$ watchthis echo hello, dude

Watch the whole /tmp dir + just a file foo in the current dir:

$ watchthis echo hello -a /tmp -a foo

Ignore foo & all *.less files:

$ watchthis echo hello -e foo -e \*.less

Be verbose & change the number of milliseconds for a debounce delay:

$ watchthis -v echo hello --debounce 400

Separate watchthis options from the options of an external command (otherwise they may clash, like with -e in the example below):

$ watchthis -e \*.less -- make -e

Don't rerun the external command if, during its run, some files were modified:

$ watchthis --norerun -a ../foo/src -- make -f ../foo/Makefile

View the list of watchers in realtime:

(terminal #1)

$ cd ~/Desktop
$ mkdir 1
$ watchthis echo alrigth -a 1 -S 8888

(terminal #2)

$ curl -s http://127.0.0.1:8888 | json
{
  "/home/alex/Desktop": [
	"1"
  ],
  "/home/alex/Desktop/1": []
}

$ touch ~/Desktop/1/omglol
$ curl -s http://127.0.0.1:8888 | json
{
  "/home/alex/Desktop": [
	"1"
  ],
  "/home/alex/Desktop/1": [
	"omglol"
  ]
}

Post-run hooks

• exit0, runs when a user-provided command returns 0 exit status;
• exit1, when the exit status != 0.

$ watchthis echo hello, dude --exit0 'play -V1 -q /usr/share/sounds/freedesktop/stereo/message.oga' --exit1 'play -V1 -q /usr/share/sounds/freedesktop/stereo/bell.oga'

Both --exit0 & --exit0 require ∃1 arg that is internally parsed via shellwords pkg, regardless of your underline OS shell.

A config file?

You don't need one & the world doesn't need another rc file. Use shell aliasing, for example, add to ~/.bashrc:

alias watchthis.sound='watchthis \
	--exit0 "play -V1 -q /usr/share/sounds/freedesktop/stereo/message.oga" \
	--exit1 "play -V1 -q /usr/share/sounds/freedesktop/stereo/bell.oga"'

& run the program like

$ watchthis.sound echo hello

Hints

Auto-restarting nodejs server

If you write, for example, an HTTP server in nodejs & want it to automatically restart on each change in its source code, use this simple makefile:

$ cat server.mk
.PHONY: server
server: kill
	./my-server &

.PHONY: kill
kill:
	-pkill -f 'node ./my-server'

& run watchthis as:

$ watchthis.sound -- make -f server.mk

Notice that we run my-server in the background. It's necessary to do so, otherwise watchthis will wait for make to finish & will respond with LOCKED to each attempt to run make again while the previous invocation has not been finished. The node program (my-server) will still share the stdout & the stderr w/ watchthis (& usually will be killed too if you press Ctrl-C), so the fact that it's running in the bg isn't a problem.

Bugs

• Simple exclude patterns like '*.js' will fail if an argument to -a option contain ... To mitigate this, instead of a naïve

    watchthis -a  ../foo -e \*.js -- make

  run

    watchthis -a $(realpath ../foo) -e "$(realpath ../foo)/*.js" -- make

• -a option doesn't accept globs; e.g. this will fail w/ ENOENT error: watchthis -a 'foo/*.js' -- make.

• Battle-tested under Fedora only.

License

MIT.