Chokidar CLI

Ultra-fast cross-platform command line utility to watch file system changes.

The underlying watch library is Chokidar, which is one of the best watch utilities for Node. Chokidar is battle-tested:

It is used in brunch, karma, PM2, browserify, webpack, BrowserSync, socketstream, derby, and many others. It has proven itself in production environments.

Install

If you need it only with NPM scripts:

npm install chokidar-cli

Or globally

npm install -g chokidar-cli

Usage

By default chokidar streams changes for all patterns to stdout:

$ chokidar '**/.js' '**/*.less'
change:test/dir/a.js
change:test/dir/a.less
add:test/b.js
unlink:test/b.js

Each change is represented with format event:relativepath. Possible events: add, unlink, addDir, unlinkDir, change.

Output only relative paths on each change

$ chokidar '**/.js' '**/*.less' | cut -d ':' -f 2-
test/dir/a.js
test/dir/a.less
test/b.js
test/b.js

Run npm run build-js whenever any .js file changes in the current work directory tree

chokidar '**/*.js' -c 'npm run build-js'

Watching in network directories must use polling

chokidar '**/*.less' -c 'npm run build-less' --polling

Detailed help

Usage: chokidar <pattern> [<pattern>...] [options]

<pattern>:
Glob pattern to specify files to be watched.
Multiple patterns can be watched by separating patterns with spaces.
To prevent shell globbing, write pattern inside quotes.
Guide to globs: https://github.com/isaacs/node-glob#glob-primer


Options:
  -c, --command           Command to run after each change. Needs to be
                          surrounded with quotes when command contains spaces
  -d, --debounce          Debounce timeout in ms for executing command
                                                                  [default: 400]
  -s, --follow-symlinks   When not set, only the symlinks themselves will be
                          watched for changes instead of following the link
                          references and bubbling events through the links path
                                                     [boolean]  [default: false]
  -i, --ignore            Pattern for files which should be ignored. Needs to
                          be surrounded with quotes to prevent shell globbing.
                          The whole relative or absolute path is tested, not
                          just filename
  --initial               When set, command is initially run once
                                                     [boolean]  [default: false]
  -p, --polling           Whether to use fs.watchFile(backed by polling)
                          instead of fs.watch. This might lead to high CPU
                          utilization. It is typically necessary to set this to
                          true to successfully watch files over a network, and
                          it may be necessary to successfully watch files in
                          other non-standard situations
                                                     [boolean]  [default: false]
  --poll-interval         Interval of file system polling. Effective when
                          --polling is set                        [default: 100]
  --poll-interval-binary  Interval of file system polling for binary files.
                          Effective when --polling is set         [default: 300]
  --verbose               When set, output is more verbose and human readable.
                                                     [boolean]  [default: false]
  -h, --help              Show help
  -v, --version           Show version number

Examples:
  chokidar "**/*.js" -c "npm run build-js"    build when any .js file changes
  chokidar "**/*.js" "**/*.less"              output changes of .js and .less
                                              files

License

MIT