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     ;;             ;;.'  '==============='    |__|__|__   |__|  |__|__|__|
      \\           ///                                  |__|   
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         `'-----'`

KQFM: A utility to monitor files for changes

Latest version: 1.0.0

Homepage

kqfm takes a list of paths on stdin and monitors them for changes using kqueue(1), outputting those changes to stdout.

Dependencies

kqfm has no dependencies. It only works on platforms where kqueue(1) is available, such as Mac OS X, FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD, and DragonflyBSD.

Install

OS X via Homebrew

brew install https://raw.github.com/gabrielg/kqfm/master/brew/kqfm.rb

If you like kqfm, please consider submitting the formula to Homebrew.

I've already made the formula, but they frown on authors submitting their own work. I can't blame them.

OS X and other supported platforms, manually

Get the source and run make install.

Examples

Watch a directory of .md files for writes, and output a listing when a file is written to.

find doc -name '*.md' | kqfm -e write | while read path changes; do ls -la $path; done

Watch a single file and run a command when it changes in any way.

echo "file.c" | kqfm | while read changes; do make; done

The man page contains some more usage information.

Similar projects

guard and wach both already exist, and may suit your needs better than this. Check them out too.

I wrote this to scratch my own itch, which was for something with no dependencies that operates with plain old text, and leaves things like executing commands to other programs.

Contributing

Patches appreciated. Fork, make changes, and send over a pull request.

Ronn is used to generate the man page. I suggest using it to preview your work if you're changing the man page, but please don't commit the generated output from ronn, just commit the original Markdown file.

Contributors

• Colin Stolley

Author / Copyright

Gabriel Gironda, 2012. See LICENSE for license details.