Watchman: Execute a command when something changes

• entr

  5 591 5.6 C

  A utility for running arbitrary commands when files change. Uses kqueue(2) or inotify(7) to avoid polling. entr responds to file system events by executing command line arguments or by writing to a FIFO. entr was written to provide to make rapid feedback and automated testing natural and completely ordinary. (by clibs)

  

Not sure what generated interest in this.

This was a project I did for my personal use case. But I haven't been using it since years. I'd recommend [entr](https://github.com/clibs/entr) for the use case watchman was to serve.

• watchman

  4 458 3.6 Shell

  Execute a command when something changes (by crodjer)

• InfluxDB

  www.influxdata.com sponsored

  Power Real-Time Data Analytics at Scale. Get real-time insights from all types of time series data with InfluxDB. Ingest, query, and analyze billions of data points in real-time with unbounded cardinality.

  

• watchman

  31 12,263 9.0 C++

  Watches files and records, or triggers actions, when they change.

  

Not to be confused with Facebook’s file watch daemon, which does the same sort of thing but is more complicated. There’s a bunch of tools that integrate Facebook’s watchman for more efficient change tracking.

https://facebook.github.io/watchman/

• incron

  1 218 0.0 C++

  cron-like daemon which handles filesystem events

I've used `incron`[0] for that purpose, with success

[0]https://github.com/ar-/incron

• fswatch

  22 4,882 0.0 C++

  A cross-platform file change monitor with multiple backends: Apple OS X File System Events, *BSD kqueue, Solaris/Illumos File Events Notification, Linux inotify, Microsoft Windows and a stat()-based backend.

The required kernel hooks exist in pretty much any common OS these days, it is a user-space tool that is sometimes missing.

It may not be installed by default, but inotifywait is available in common Linux distributions, usually in a package called something like ionotify-tools, and has been for over a decade-ana-half IIRC. It'll work under WSL on Windows too, though only for ext4 devices not bits of the Windows filesystem made available to Linux.

I can't speak to what other OSs include by default, but as every major OS has a different API for defining how to register a lister and how it gets messages no built-in tool is going to be cross platform. There are third party tools which present more cross-platform consistency, most notably https://github.com/emcrisostomo/fswatch#readme (also available in common Linux distros, just an apt install away in Debian for instance).

• watchdog

  15 6,250 7.9 Python

  Python library and shell utilities to monitor filesystem events.

Also not to be confused with watchdog and it's command watchmedo, which is what I thought this was when I first read the headline. I don't know what the differences are, but I use this to restart my local celery workers when I make changes. It's scripted out so I don't ever use the command directly.

https://pypi.org/project/watchdog/

https://github.com/gorakhargosh/watchdog

• reflex

  15 3,260 0.0 Go

  Run a command when files change (by cespare)

• WorkOS

  workos.com sponsored

  The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS. The APIs are flexible and easy-to-use, supporting authentication, user identity, and complex enterprise features like SSO and SCIM provisioning.

  

• WatchMod

  1 2 4.2 Go

  Watch for modifications to trigger actions. Useful for compiling Go templates, Sass, Typescript, and more.

  

Here was our take on the problem written in Go.

https://github.com/Cyphrme/watch

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• watcher

  16 627 9.6 C++

  Filesystem watcher. Works anywhere. Simple, efficient and friendly. (by e-dant)

Those considering doing something like this (such as the author) might consider using my library:

https://github.com/e-dant/watcher

It hooks into system APIs where viable. (Otherwise, it uses std::filesystem.)

It’s meant to be as or more:

Easy to use

• entr

  47 4,002 6.8 C

  Run arbitrary commands when files change

The page linked above says:

> WARNING: This is a (possibly outdated and/or unmaintained) fork of https://github.com/eradman/entr .

• fwe

  1 2 10.0 Rust

  File Watch Execute

I wrote something very similar.

https://github.com/m00dy/fwe

• dotfiles

  3 21 7.3 Vim Script

  :octocat: Tim does dotfiles (by timvisee)

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