watchexec
Executes commands in response to file modifications (by watchexec)
watchman
Watches files and records, or triggers actions, when they change. (by facebook)
| watchexec | watchman | |
|---|---|---|
| 22 | 35 | |
| 6,148 | 13,130 | |
| 2.2% | 0.4% | |
| 9.0 | 9.0 | |
| 20 days ago | 4 days ago | |
| Rust | C++ | |
| Apache License 2.0 | MIT License |
The number of mentions indicates the total number of mentions that we've tracked plus the number of user suggested alternatives.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.
Stars - the number of stars that a project has on GitHub. Growth - month over month growth in stars.
Activity is a relative number indicating how actively a project is being developed. Recent commits have higher weight than older ones.
For example, an activity of 9.0 indicates that a project is amongst the top 10% of the most actively developed projects that we are tracking.
watchexec
Posts with mentions or reviews of watchexec.
We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives
and similar projects. The last one was on 2025-07-08.
- Watchfiles: Simple, modern and fast file watching for Python, written in Rust
- Watchexec: Execute commands in response to file modifications
- Watchexec
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Watchexec ignore directory?
Hi, I am using Watchexec (https://github.com/watchexec/watchexec/releases) to monitor folder changes, but I want to exclude some folders. What parameter should I use to perform the route exclusions?
-
How to automatically extract all zip files downloaded to certain directory?
Use https://github.com/watchexec/watchexec
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My first actual Rust program: Cloak, a simple app to search and watch directories to automatically hide files and directories
There's something similar to this called watchexec, which you can have a look at https://github.com/watchexec/watchexec
-
Turbowatch – Extremely fast alternative to Nodemon
Or use watchexec which will do 95% of what you need and you're not tied to nodejs.
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What "nice-to-have" CLI tools do you know?
watchexec
-
is there a plugin to run any file (.py .js .java etc.) and display the output?
I use watchexec to automatically run the code when saved, you should customise this to your liking.
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[Paid Bounty-$20 in Bitcoin!] Persistent - Watchfolder() dir, if files contains word "apple" in name, make file Read only.
OTOH PowerShell will not keep watching and is one of the requirements. In the past I've successfully used watchexecrepo and inotifywaitrepo.
watchman
Posts with mentions or reviews of watchman.
We have used some of these posts to build our list of alternatives
and similar projects. The last one was on 2024-10-18.
-
Steve Klabnik's Tutorial on Jujutsu (Git replacement)
It's a bit of a magic trick. A "snapshot" is taken any time a command is run, so for all intents and purposes it's "automatic" from the user interface e.g. even checking repo status or otherwise small operations will cause a snapshot.
But you can integrate with https://github.com/facebook/watchman/ in order to have a truly daemon-ified option where any filesystem write will cause a snapshot to be taken.
-
From React to React Native – A Beginner-Friendly Guide🚀
Install Node.js and Watchman: Ensure that you have the latest version of Node.js installed, as well as Watchman, which is a tool used for watching file changes.
- Stripe's Monorepo Developer Environment
-
Ask HN: Best file watcher for Node.js/Bun
I liked the idea of Facebook's watchman. Cross-platform and it would only add a watcher on each dir once, regardless of how many apps needed watcher functionality.
But it's currently uninstallable for weeks on macOS without some pain (https://github.com/facebook/watchman/issues/1199).
There is `rs-notify` and `watchexec` that builds on that but seems a bit unstable.
It's 2024, and we still don't have a good way to reliably watch a large number of files :(
The bit rot is pretty crazy. Watchman's decline was a bit shocking.
- Watchman – A File Watching Service
-
Dev Container for React Native with Expo
postCreateCommand This section permit to execute a command after the build of the container. I've used this command to execute a script to install Expo and other dependencies like watchman
- Using Bun.js as a Bundler
- How To Monitor a Folder On Startup
-
changedetection for file shares
Facebook open source product: https://github.com/facebook/watchman to get notified when configuration, file or other change
- [Media] OnChange: CLI utility to automatically run commands on file change (details in comments)
What are some alternatives?
When comparing watchexec and watchman you can also consider the following projects:
systemd-manager
go-git - A highly extensible Git implementation in pure Go.
fd - A simple, fast and user-friendly alternative to 'find'
wireguard-ui - Wireguard web interface
coreutils - Cross-platform Rust rewrite of the GNU coreutils
Lsyncd - Lsyncd (Live Syncing Daemon) synchronizes local directories with remote targets