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
- Simple invocation and use, does not require a cryptic command line involving
xargs
- Runs on OS X, Linux, and Windows
- Monitors current directory and all subdirectories for changes
- Coalesces multiple filesystem events into one, for editors that use swap/backup files during saving
- Loads
.gitignore
and.ignore
files - Uses process groups to keep hold of forking programs
- Provides the paths that changed in environment variables
- Does not require a language runtime, not tied to any particular language or ecosystem
- And more!
Watch all JavaScript, CSS and HTML files in the current directory and all subdirectories for changes, running npm run build
when a change is detected:
$ watchexec -e js,css,html npm run build
Call/restart python server.py
when any Python file in the current directory (and all subdirectories) changes:
$ watchexec -r -e py -- python server.py
More usage examples: in the CLI README!
- As pre-built binary package: https://watchexec.github.io/downloads/
- With your package manager for Arch, Homebrew, Nix, Scoop, Chocolatey…
- From source with Cargo:
cargo install watchexec-cli
All options in detail: in the CLI README.
- watchexec library: to create more specialised watchexec-powered tools! such as:
- cargo watch: for Rust/Cargo projects.
- clearscreen: to clear the (terminal) screen on every platform.
- command group: to run commands in process groups.
- notify: to respond to file modifications (third-party).
- globset: to match globs (third-party).