Looking for a way to run a command each time a file(s) changes that can work across multiple platforms?

Previously, I would have used guard but I’m trying to break my reliance on Ruby tools.

Enter entr a commandline utility written in C. It does the same thing as Guard but without the dependency on Ruby and without needing verbose configuration files.

Installing on OSX is simple: brew install entr and other platforms look like:

./configure
make test
make install

Using it is even simpler. I’m using it to rebuild a presentation which means re-running a make task each time the source file changes. If the command were being run manually it would be:

make reveal

With entr installed we can run:

find dir/ -name *.md | entr make reveal

Or for convenience we can wrap it in a shell script:

#!/usr/bin/env bash

readonly FILENAME=surviving_large_unfamiliar_codebases

(cd ${FILENAME} && \
  echo ${FILENAME}.md | entr make reveal)

Edit:

In case only a single file needs to be monitored, try out this BASH script: