fs-change

Monitor files or directories and execute actions in response to changes.

File watchers and triggered actions are specified in a single file.

Watch file format

The location of this file defaults to ~/.fs-change.

Each line has a glob (or simple file) on the left of a colon, and a command on the right.

The command on the right will have the following keywords available:

• {file}, the fullpath of the matching file (usually just the string to the left of the colon).
• {basename}, the shortname of {file}, without path or extension.
• {dirname}, the directory containing {file}.

Example:

/Users/chbrown/work/mailscript/css/site.less: cd {dirname} && lessc -C site.less site.css
/Volumes/sshfs1/app4/css/*.less: cd {dirname} && lessc -C {basename}.less {basename}.css

Configuration

The following environment variables can be used to configure the behavior of the file listener.

• OSX default: unset

  If set, fs-change will log to the NotificationCenter as well as STDOUT/STDERR.

• CONFIG default: '~/.fs-change'

  Specify the path to the configuration file specifying the files to watch.

• DEBUG default: unset

  If set, fs-change will set the log level to DEBUG.

Installation

npm install -g fs-change
fs-change print-launch-agent > ~/Library/LaunchAgents/npmjs.fs-change.plist
launchctl load ~/Library/LaunchAgents/npmjs.fs-change.plist

The generated LaunchAgent will log to ~/Library/Logs/fs-change.log, which you can view in Console.app.

To uninstall:

launchctl unload ~/Library/LaunchAgents/npmjs.fs-change.plist
rm ~/Library/LaunchAgents/npmjs.fs-change.plist

TODO

• If some file does not exist, the script will continue to try the other files, and should retry any inaccessible file every 60 seconds. I do a lot of development on remote servers, so the files are only accessible when I have sshfs connected, but I don't want to have to run something to tell my LESS compiler that it should retry the filepath in question.
• Add documentation for macro syntax (& /regex/flags/ => replacement)

License

Copyright 2012-2015 Christopher Brown. MIT Licensed.