Stopplicht

Stopplicht is a menu bar/system tray indicator for osx, Windows, and Linux. There are four states available: red, green, yellow, and grey. These states make it great for showing test run status during TDD, but it could be used for anything.

Get it

Stopplicht requires Node.js. To install stopplicht, run npm install -g stopplicht.

Run it

Once stopplicht has been installed, it can be started by running stopplicht in the terminal. Stopplicht will start as a background process and is, as of yet, non-interactive. To quit stopplicht, run stopplicht-stop.

Use it

Stopplicht runs a tcp server on port 17357 and listens for short messages to change it's state. For example, to change the indicator to red using netcat:

> echo 1 | nc localhost 17357

The available messages are 0 (grey), 1 (red), 2 (green), 3 (yellow), and stop to kill the server. Short cut commands are provided so that integration with other scripts should be easier. Those commands are stopplicht-grey, stopplicht-red, stopplicht-green, stopplicht-yellow, and stopplicht-stop, respectively.

Additionally, you can use the stopplicht-exec command followed by your favorite command to turn the indicator yellow while the command runs and then red or green to indicate failure or success respectively. Failure is indicated by a non-zero exit code. For example:

> stopplicht-exec npm test

You can also throw in a file system watcher like wach for added excitement:

> wach stopplicht-exec npm test