watchdir

Watchdir

• Project: https://github.com/c4s4/watchdir
• Downloads: https://github.com/c4s4/watchdir/releases

Tool to watch directories and run commands when given file events are triggered (possible events are CREATE, REMOVE, WRITE, RENAME and CHMOD). Licensed under GPL V3.

Installation

Download binary archive at https://github.com/c4s4/watchdir/releases, unzip it and copy the binary executable for your platform (named watchdir-os-arch) somewhere in yout PATH and rename it watchdir. This executable doesn't need any dependency or virtual machine to run.

There are binaries for following platforms:

• Linux 386, amd64 and arm.
• FreeBSD 386, amd64 and arm.
• NetBSD 386, amd64 and arm.
• OpenBSD 386 and amd64.
• Darwin 386 and amd64.
• Windows 386 and amd64.

There are no binaries for Plan9 because fsnotify library doesn't build on it.

Usage

To run watchdir with config.yml configuration file, you should type:

watchdir config.yml

If no configuration file is passed on command line, default ones are used if found:

• ~/.watchdir.yml
• /etc/watchdir.yml

Configuration

Configuration file is using YAML syntax and could look like:

/tmp:
    CREATE: 'echo "%e: %f"'
    REMOVE: 'echo "%e: %f"'

This is a map with directories for keys. For each watched directory, a command is associated for given events.

In these commands, following replacements are made:

• %f is replaced with the absolute file name.
• %e is replaced with the name of the event (such as CREATE or REMOVE).
• %% is replaced with a single %.

Service

To run this tool as a service, copy watchdir.init in /etc/init.d/ directory:

sudo cp watchdir.init /etc/init.d/watchdir

You can then start and stop service with commands:

sudo service watchdir start
sudo service watchdir stop

Logs are written to file /var/log/watchdir.log.

To make your service start at boot time:

sudo update-rc.d watchdir defaults

To remove it from boot sequence:

sudo update-rc.d -f watchdir remove

Enjoy!