watch-file

A simple CLI tool to watch files for changes.

Sure, there are probably a million other tools that do this, including tail -f being built into most, if not all, linux distros.

This package has some opinions that I thought to make it a bit more user-friendly:

• It works just about anywhere - particularly, where more common solutions aren't as readily available. I didn't want to have to open git bash on windows just to use tail -f.
• Its defaults assume you're a human looking at a screen, not a piece of code reading data. Unless you specify otherwise, you'll see other important, such as the last time a change was noticed.
• It recognises that change and growth are different. Many solutions assume you're watching a log file and that its only changes will be new lines at the bottom of the file. This tool recognises that that's not everyone's use case.

Installation

Installation is pretty simple. No setup, minimal prerequisites - just make sure you've got cargo. Maybe one day I'll put it on crates.io and/or make some pre-compiled binaries!

cargo install --git https://github.com/brunt-toast/watch-file.git

If you want to edit the code, it's still just a simple rust project.

git clone https://github.com/brunt-toast/watch-file.git
cd watch-file
cargo build

Features

• Diff mode ([--diff|-d]) - Generate a patch between the current version of the file, and how it was the last time we read it.

Contribute

Got an idea on how to make the project better? Feel free to send in a PR!

Bugs, suggestions, etc

If you find a bug, have an idea you can't implement yourself, or have anything else fitting, please open an issue on GitHub.

License

This project is under the GNU public license. See the LICENSE file.