gottaw

Gotta Watch Your Code!

GOTTA WATCH watches your code and builds it whenever you save a file.

Getting Started

Right now, gottaw requires golang >= 1.7 to be built. To install it, from source, just execute

$ go get github.com/makii42/gottaw

Once that hurdle is taken, you can use it with your code project. Go to the root of your code and have gottaw suggest what language it might be:

$ gottaw defaults
🔬  evaluating /home/user/go/src/github.com/makii42/gottaw
🎯  Identified default Golang

You can generate a default config file by passing an additional --write flag:

$ gottaw defaults -w
🔬  evaluating /home/user/go/src/github.com/makii42/gottaw
🎯  Identified default Golang
Default config for Golang:
===
# What is this file? Check it out at https://github.com/makii42/gottaw !
excludes:
- .git
- .hg
- .vscode
- .idea
- .gitrecinfo
- '*-go-tmp-umask'
pipeline:
- go get -v .
- go build -v .
- go test -v ./...
===
Write to './.gottaw.yml'? [y/N] y
✅  Okay!

With that, you should be good to go. Once you run gottaw in that directory, it will execute your pipeline whenever a file changes. As it does not discriminate anything, you might need to add excludes depending on your project.

Configuration

Gottaw configuration allows you to configure your pipeline steps and excluded files that should not trigger a new build. It also allows you also to specify a server command that is stopped before each build and started after a successful pipeline execution.

Pipeline steps

For a go library or command, the above default should suffice. For the node/npm default, a pipeline could look like this:

pipeline: 
- npm install
- npm test

The pipeline definition is a simple list of commands. The execution propagates the full environment of your shell. If you need build- or folder-specific environment variables, I suggest using direnv.

Excludes

Most build systems create files like binaries or dependencies in the working directory. You need to specify them in order to avoid triggering a build loop. Also your $EDITOR or $IDE keep state in a folder or file(s) that your build does not care about. For a Java build, the exclude typically are the target folder. In multi-module builds, we also should exclude the submodules' target:

excludes:
- target
- */target

Excludes have limited globbing capability. If in doubt, add more. This is something that could be improved at some point.

Workdir

By default, gottaw executes each pipeline step in the current folder where it was executed. If want to execute the commands in a different folder, set a working dir:

workdir: ./foo/bar

server command

Often you work on a server process that you obviously want to test after your build was successful. gottaw does that for you as well! By specifying a server element in your configuration, it will start the command after a successful build and keep it running until you change something else. Then it will stop the command, execute the pipeline and fire it up again.

For a nodejs / express app built with yarn , this could simply be this:

excludes: 
- .git
- node_modules
pipeline: 
- yarn install
- yarn test
server: yarn start

So after safe, just switch to your browser and refresh!

Growl support

gottaw can also growl the build result to your OS, so you don't need to watch the terminal for a success message. To enable it, just set

growl: true

Et voila:

Features

Some of the recent changes:

• Auto-Track addition and removal of folders
• Auto-Reload config if config file is changed
• Growl support
• Pre-define sensible defaults for various setups (go, node, ... )
• Server process auto-start/stop support
• Templating or some sort of substitution in command string
• Add flag to run the pipeline only once (watching stays default)
• Add docker sidecar services, to keep e.g. a database running.
• Enable global configuration for some flags/config values, like growl.

Obviously it still needs a LOT of polish. I don't have a lot on the agenda except optimizations. I'd be especially grateful if someone on Windows takes a look on the build and defaults...

PRs Welcome!