autorunner

Autorunner is a command line utility that automatically re-runs a command when a file is saved.

Installation

First install node, then:

npm install -g autorunner

Usage

At the top of any file, add autorun: COMMAND, then invoke autorunner with the filename as an argument. Each time the file is saved, COMMAND will be run.

For example, say we have a file app.coffee, and every time the file is saved it should be compiled with coffee -c app.coffee.

Just add the following line to the top of app.coffee:

autorun: coffee -c app.coffee

and watch app.coffee with autorunner:

$ autorunner app.coffee

Note that this example could also be accomplished with coffee -wc app.coffee - autorunner is a more generic solution.

Filepath Insertion

We can generalize the autorun script by automatically inserting the filename:

autorun: coffee -c $FILEPATH

Here, $FILEPATH will be replaced with the full path to app.coffee before the command is run.

Wildcard Watching

Multiple files can be watched at once by appending them to the argument list, or feeding autorunner a wildcard.

For example, to autorun the commands on every .coffee and .rb script in the current directory, you could use:

$ autorunner *.coffee *.rb

Use Cases

Refresh Chrome when an HTML file is updated

On Mac:

autorun: osascript -e 'tell application "Google Chrome" to tell the active tab of its first window to reload'

Automatically Run a Ruby script

autorun: ruby $FILEPATH

Contributing

Pull requests, comments, and criticisms are welcome!