This package includes several useful Trick for watchdog (Python API for monitoring file system events, https://github.com/gorakhargosh/watchdog).

Tricks could be running in standalone mode or combined via a configuration file. They will perform specific tasks upon file change event.

• LessTrick: Auto recompiling LessCSS to CSS
• CoffeeScriptTrick: Auto recompiling CoffeeScript to Javascript
• AutoCompileTrick: A generic trick to auto recompiling source code
• ServerRestartTrick: Restart a daemon process on source code changes

lesswatcher is a standalone script that auto recompiling lessCSS files. An example usage is

$ lesswatcher --lessc-path /path/to/lessc static/less static/css

if lessc is already in your search path, you could just skip --lessc-path arg.

The true power of watchdog tricks is shown via configuration files, which could combine different tricks together and give you a fully automated development and building system. Here is an example of trick configuration file

tricks:
- watchdog.tricks.ShellCommandTrick:
    patterns: ["*.py","*.html"]
    shell_command: "cat gunicorn.pid | xargs kill -HUP"
    wait_for_process: true
- watchdog_tricks.compiler.LessTrick:
    src_dir: 'static/less'
    dest_dir: 'static/css'
- watchdog_tricks.compiler.CoffeeScriptTrick:
    src_dir: 'static/cs'
    dest_dir: 'static/js'
    compile_opts: '-b'

Put the configuration file to the root directory that needs to be monitored. Assume the filename is tricks.yaml. To run watchdog with this configuration file

$ watchmedo tricks tricks.yaml

watchdog_tricks.compiler.LessTrick:

• src_dir: Directory of LessCSS source files
• dest_dir: Directory of output CSS files
• compile_opts: Command-line options for LessCSS compiler
• compiler: LessCSS compiler path. Default is 'lessc'

watchdog_tricks.compiler.CoffeeScriptTrick:

• src_dir: Directory of CoffeeScript source files
• dest_dir: Directory of output JavaScript files
• compile_opts: Command-line options for CoffeeScript compiler
• compiler: CoffeeScript compiler path. Default is 'coffee'

AutoCompileTrick provides a generic way to auto recompile your source files once it's been modified. Both LessTricks and CoffeeScriptTrick are extended from AutoCompileTrick. watchdog_tricks.compiler.AutoCompileTrick:

• src_dir: Directory of source files
• dest_dir: Directory of compiled files
• src_ext: Extension of source files
• dest_ext: Extension of compiled files
• compile_opts: Command-line options for the compiler
• compiler: Path to the compiler
• compile_command: Template to build the compile command. See details below.

compile_command takes several predefined variables which you might need to form a compile command. Those variables include:

• src: Path to the source file
• dst: Path to the compiled file
• compiler: Path toe the compiler
• opts: Command-line options for the compiler

An example configuration file to auto recompile markdown files to html for example.com

tricks:
- watchdog_tricks.compiler.AutoCompileTrick:
    src_dir: 'docs'
    dest_dir: 'build/docs'
    src_ext: 'md'
    dest_ext: 'html'
    compiler: 'markdown'
    opts: '-b http://example.com'
    compile_command: '$compiler $opts < $src > $dst'

watchdog_tricks.compiler.CtagsTrick:

• filetypes: file types to be monitored
• rebuild: whether rebuilding all tags on startup

An example configuration file to auto re-generate tag files for python and coffeescript source files

tricks:
- watchdog_tricks.compiler.CtagsTrick:
    filetypes: ['py', 'coffee']
    rebuild: true

watchdog_tricks.batch.ServerRestartTrick:

• restart_command: the command to restart the server

An example to restart gunicorn web servers on python source code changes

tricks:
- watchdog_tricks.batch.ServerRestartTrick:
    patterns: ['*.py']
    restart_command: sudo kill -HUP /srv/logs/gunicorn.pid

Install directly from github.com

$ pip install git+git://github.com/yejianye/watchdog-tricks.git

Or clone this repository and run

$ python setup.py install