NAME¶
inotify-hookable - blocking command-line interface to inotify
SYNOPSIS¶
Watch a directory, tell us when things change in it:
inotify-hookable --watch-directories /tmp/watch-this
Watch a git tree, some configs, and a repository of static assets, restart the
webserver or compress those assets if anything changes:
inotify-hookable \
--watch-directories /etc/uwsgi \
--watch-directories /git_tree/central \
--watch-directories /etc/app-config \
--watch-directories /git_tree/static_assets \
--on-modify-path-command "^(/etc/uwsgi|/git_tree/central|/etc/app-config)=sudo /etc/init.d/uwsgi restart" \
--on-modify-path-command "^/git_tree/static_assets=(cd /git_tree/static_assets && compress_static_assets)"
Or watch specific files:
inotify-hookable \
--watch-files /var/www/cgi-bin/mod_perl_handler \
--on-modify-command "apachectl restart"
DESCRIPTION¶
This simple command-line program is my replacement for the functionality offered
by Plack's Filesys::Notify::Simple. I found that on very large git trees Plack
would spend an inordinate amount watching the filesystem for changes.
This program uses Linux::Inotify2, so the kernel will notify it
instantly
when something changes (actually it's so fast that we have to work around how
fast it sends us events).
The result is that you can run this e.g. in a screen session and have it watch
your development environment, and your webserver will have begun restarting
before your finger leaves the
save button.
vim and emacs temporary files are ignored by default (see
"--ignore-paths".) so you can edit your files without your server
restarting unnecessarily.
Currently the command-line interface for this is the only one that really makes
sense, this module is entirely blocking (although it could probably run in
another process via POE or something). Patches welcome.
OPTIONS¶
"-w" or "--watch-directories"¶
Specify this to watch a directory, you can give this however many times you like
to watch lots of directories.
"-f" or "--watch-files"¶
Watch a file, specify multiple times for multiple files. You can watch files and
directories in the same command.
"-r" or "--recursive"¶
If you supply this any directory you give will be recursively watched. This is
on by default.
"-c" or "--on-modify-command"¶
A command that will be run when something is modified.
"-C" or "--on-modify-path-command"¶
A key-value pair where the key is a regex that'll be matched against a modified
path, and the value is a command that'll be run. See the "SYNOPSIS"
for an example.
Useful for e.g. restarting a webserver if you modify directory
A but
compressing some static assets if you modify directory
B.
"-t" or "--buffer-time"¶
Linux will send you inotify events
really fast, so fast that if you run
something like:
touch foo bar
You might get an event for
foo in one batch, followed by an event for
bar later on.
To deal with this we enter a loop when we start getting events and sleep for a
default of 100 microseconds, as long as we keep getting events we keep
sleeping for 100 microseconds, but as soon as we haven't received anything new
we fire off our event handlers.
"-i" or "--ignore-paths"¶
Regexes for files/directories to ignore events for. By default this is set to
regexes for vim and emacs temporary files, "qr{\..*sw.\z}" and
"qr{\.\#[^/]+\z}" respectively.
The regexes match after any "/" in the path or the beginning of the
string.
"-d" or "--debug"¶
Spew out some verbose debug output while running.
ACKNOWLEDGMENT¶
This module was originally developed at and for Booking.com. With approval from
Booking.com, this module was generalized and put on CPAN, for which the
authors would like to express their gratitude.
AUTHOR¶
AEvar Arnfjoerd` Bjarmason <avar@cpan.org>