Docker Windows Detect Changes

A small tool meant to help with file change detection within Linux containers on Docker for Windows. How it works:

1. An API server is started within the Docker container
2. A file watcher is started in the Windows powershell.
3. The file watcher detects changes and sends an HTTP request to the server.
4. The server performs a "touch" on a file set in the config, which propagates the change detection within the container.

Table Of Contents

• Getting Started
• Config File Reference
• Full CLI Reference

Getting Started

First, you'll need to install docker-windows-detect-changes both in Windows (outside the Docker container) and inside the Docker container.

npm i @lemmsoft/docker-windows-detect changes

If you don't want to install NodeJS and NPM in Windows itself, simply download the latest binary from the build folder.

{
	"port": 1234,
	"paths": [
		{
			"fileToTouch": "./back-end/main.js",
			"ignoredRegexString": "./back-end/main.js",
			"pathToWatch": "./back-end"
		}
	]
}

The above configuration will start a change detection API server at port 1234, and will set up the change detection watcher to touch the file "./back-end/main.js" whenever something in the "./back-end" directory and its subdirectories is added/changed/deleted. Then, in the docker container, go to the directory containing the file you just created and start the change detection API server by running

docker-windows-detect-changes -s

This will start the server at port 1234. After the server is started, outside the container - in Windows - navigate to the directory containging the .json config file and run

docker-windows-detect-changes

This will start the file watcher for the "pathToWatch" directory. That's it - you're good to go!

Config File Reference

// docker-windows-detect-changes.json
{
	"port": number, // the port that the server will be started on; required if using the -s flag when running the docker-windows-detect-changes command
	// the configuration for the paths that are to be watched; required when running the docker-windows-detect-changes command without the -s flag
	"paths": [
		{
			"fileToTouch": string, // the file that will be touched when a change is detected, which will in turn propagate the changes inside the docker container
			"ignoredRegexString": string | RegExp, // a string or regular expression, matching the files or folders to be excluded from the file watcher; must contain the "fileToTouch" file, otherwise an infinite loop will be created
			"pathToWatch": string // the path to the file or folder to be watched
		}
	]
}

Full CLI Reference

Usage: docker-windows-detect-changes [options] Options:   -s       starts a ChangeDetectionServer at the TCP port provided using the -p argument   -p       required and only used if -s is provided; specifies the TCP port at which the ChangeDetectionServer should be started   -c       optional; specifies the config file to use for starting the ChangeDetectionWatcher; if not provided, the script will look for a file named "docker-windows-detect-changes.json" in the process' working directory   -h, --help   display the help menu