Run commands when paths change.
You'll need to install Node.js to use Watchy. Node comes packaged with npm, which is Node's package manager, and the preferred method of installing Watchy. After installing Node, simply type
npm install -g watchyand you should have the watchy command available!
Usage: watchy [options] -- command arg1 arg2...
Options:
--watch, -w A path or comma-separated paths to watch.
--ignore, -i A regex of file paths to ignore. [default: "/\\."]
--keep-alive, -k Restart the process if it exits. Useful for servers. [default: false]
--wait, -W Time (sec) to wait after sending SIGTERM to forcefully SIGKILL.
--silent, -s Silence watching info, errors will still output to stderr. [default: false]
--no-color, -n Do not color output. [default: false]
--version, -v Display the version.
--restart, -r Type this command to manually restart the process. Set to - to disable. [default: "rs"]
# The simple case
watchy -w lib -- say "The lib directory changed."
# Piping works as well
watchy -w styles -- bash -c "lessc styles/main.less | autoprefixer -o .tmp/styles/main.css"
# Keep a process alive, restarting it as soon as it exits or "server.js"
# changes.
watchy -kw server.js -- node server.js
# Watch every file except dotfiles, the node_modules folder, and JSON files.
# NOTE: Listen to as few files as possible for better performance.
watchy -w . -i '/\.|/node_modules|\.json$' -- node server.js
# Tick tock!
watchy -ks -- bash -c 'date && sleep 1'
# Tick tock (annoying version)!
watchy -ks -- bash -c 'say "In case you were wondering, it is `date`" && sleep 5'
# $EVENT and $FILE are passed to the process from chokidar (thanks @remy).
watchy -w . -- bash -c 'echo $EVENT $FILE'
# => change /Users/casey/projects/watchy/README.mdNote: If you're using
watchyfor help with preprocessing, I'd recommend checking out my cogs project that is highly optimized for that case with in-memory processed file caching, directives, AMD support, and much more.
By default, watchy will send SIGTERM to the running process after a change and wait for it to exit gracefully. By sending the --wait|-W n option, you can tell watchy to forcefully SIGKILL the process after n seconds. In general, you should try to clean up connections in your processes like so:
process.on('SIGTERM', function () {
server.close();
db.disconnect();
redis.quit();
// etc...
});