And added support for Kernel.#` and %x literal.
10 KiB
Guard
Guard is a command line tool that easily handle events on files modifications.
If you have any questions please join us on our Google group or on #guard
(irc.freenode.net).
Features
- FSEvent support on Mac OS X 10.5+ (without RubyCocoa!, rb-fsevent gem, >= 0.3.5 required).
- Inotify support on Linux (rb-inotify gem, >= 0.5.1 required).
- Directory Change Notification support on Windows (rb-fchange, >= 0.0.2 required).
- Polling on the other operating systems (help us to support more OS).
- Automatic & Super fast (when polling is not used) files modifications detection (even new files are detected).
- Growl notifications (growlnotify & growl gem required).
- Libnotify notifications (libnotify gem required).
- Tested on Ruby 1.8.7, 1.9.2 && ree.
Install
Install the gem:
$ gem install guard
Add it to your Gemfile (inside the development
group):
gem 'guard'
Generate an empty Guardfile with:
$ guard init
You may optionally place a .Guardfile in your home directory to use it across multiple projects.
Add the guards you need to your Guardfile (see the existing guards below).
On Mac OS X
Install the rb-fsevent gem for FSEvent support:
$ gem install rb-fsevent
Install the Growl gem if you want notification support:
$ gem install growl
And add them to your Gemfile:
gem 'rb-fsevent'
gem 'growl'
On Linux
Install the rb-inotify gem for inotify support:
$ gem install rb-inotify
Install the Libnotify gem if you want notification support:
$ gem install libnotify
And add them to your Gemfile:
gem 'rb-inotify'
gem 'libnotify'
On Windows
Install the rb-fchange gem for Directory Change Notification support:
$ gem install rb-fchange
Install the Notifu gem if you want notification support:
$ gem install rb-notifu
And add them to your Gemfile:
gem 'rb-fchange'
gem 'rb-notifu'
Usage
Just launch Guard inside your Ruby / Rails project with:
$ guard [start]
or if you use Bundler, to run the Guard executable specific to your bundle:
$ bundle exec guard [start]
Guard will look for a Guardfile in your current directory. If it does not find one, it will look in your $HOME
directory for a .Guardfile.
Command line options
--clear
option
Shell can be cleared after each change:
$ guard --clear
$ guard -c # shortcut
--notify
option
Notifications (growl/libnotify) can be disabled:
$ guard --notify false
$ guard -n f # shortcut
Notifications can also be disabled globally by setting a GUARD_NOTIFY
environment variable to false
--group
option
Only certain guards groups can be run (see the Guardfile DSL below for creating groups):
$ guard --group group_name another_group_name
$ guard -g group_name another_group_name # shortcut
--debug
option
Guard can be run in debug mode:
$ guard --debug
$ guard -d # shortcut
--dry-run
option
Do a dry run without executing actions:
$ guard --dry-run
$ guard -y # shortcut
An exhaustive list of options is available with:
$ guard help [TASK]
Signal handlers
Signal handlers are used to interact with Guard:
Ctrl-C
- Calls each guard's#stop
method, in the same order they are declared in the Guardfile, and then quits Guard itself.Ctrl-\
- Calls each guard's#run_all
method, in the same order they are declared in the Guardfile.Ctrl-Z
- Calls each guard's#reload
method, in the same order they are declared in the Guardfile.
You can read more about configure the signal keyboard shortcuts in the wiki.
Available Guards
A list of the available guards is present in the wiki.
Add a guard to your Guardfile
Add it to your Gemfile (inside the development
group):
gem '<guard-name>'
Insert default guard's definition to your Guardfile by running this command:
$ guard init <guard-name>
You are good to go, or you can modify your guards' definition to suit your needs.
Guardfile DSL
The Guardfile DSL consists of just three simple methods: #guard
, #watch
& #group
.
Required:
- The
#guard
method allows you to add a guard with an optional hash of options.
Optional:
- The
#watch
method allows you to define which files are supervised by this guard. An optional block can be added to overwrite the paths sent to the guard's#run_on_change
method or to launch any arbitrary command. - The
#group
method allows you to group several guards together. Groups to be run can be specified with the Guard DSL option--group
(or-g
). This comes in handy especially when you have a huge Guardfile and want to focus your development on a certain part.
Example:
group 'backend' do
guard 'bundler' do
watch('Gemfile')
end
guard 'rspec', :cli => '--color --format doc' do
# Regexp watch patterns are matched with Regexp#match
watch(%r{^spec/.+_spec\.rb$})
watch(%r{^lib/(.+)\.rb$}) { |m| "spec/lib/#{m[1]}_spec.rb" }
watch(%r{^spec/models/.+\.rb$}) { ["spec/models", "spec/acceptance"] }
watch(%r{^spec/.+\.rb$}) { `say hello` }
# String watch patterns are matched with simple '=='
watch('spec/spec_helper.rb') { "spec" }
end
end
group 'frontend' do
guard 'coffeescript', :output => 'public/javascripts/compiled' do
watch(%r{^app/coffeescripts/.+\.coffee$})
end
guard 'livereload' do
watch(%r{^app/.+\.(erb|haml)$})
end
end
Using a Guardfile without the guard
binary
The Guardfile DSL can also be used in a programmatic fashion by calling directly Guard::Dsl.evaluate_guardfile
.
Available options are as follow:
:guardfile
- The path to a valid Guardfile.:guardfile_contents
- A string representing the content of a valid Guardfile
Remember, without any options given, Guard will look for a Guardfile in your current directory and if it does not find one, it will look for it in your $HOME
directory.
For instance, you could use it as follow:
gem 'guard'
require 'guard'
Guard.setup
Guard::Dsl.evaluate_guardfile(:guardfile => '/your/custom/path/to/a/valid/Guardfile')
# or
Guard::Dsl.evaluate_guardfile(:guardfile_contents => "
guard 'rspec' do
watch(%r{^spec/.+_spec\.rb$})
end
")
Listing defined guards/groups for the current project
You can list the defined groups and guards for the current Guardfile from the command line using guard show
or guard -T
:
# guard -T
(global):
shell
Group backend:
bundler
rspec: cli => "--color --format doc'
Group frontend:
coffeescript: output => "public/javascripts/compiled"
livereload
Create a new guard
Creating a new guard is very easy, just create a new gem (bundle gem
if you use Bundler) with this basic structure:
.travis.yml # bonus point!
CHANGELOG.md # bonus point!
Gemfile
guard-name.gemspec
Guardfile
lib/
guard/
guard-name/
templates/
Guardfile # needed for `guard init <guard-name>`
version.rb
guard-name.rb
test/ # or spec/
README.md
Guard::GuardName
(in lib/guard/guard-name.rb
) must inherit from Guard::Guard
and should overwrite at least one of the five basic Guard::Guard
instance methods.
Here is an example scaffold for lib/guard/guard-name.rb
:
require 'guard'
require 'guard/guard'
module Guard
class GuardName < Guard
def initialize(watchers=[], options={})
super
# init stuff here, thx!
end
# =================
# = Guard methods =
# =================
# If one of those methods raise an exception, the Guard::GuardName instance
# will be removed from the active guards.
# Called once when Guard starts
# Please override initialize method to init stuff
def start
true
end
# Called on Ctrl-C signal (when Guard quits)
def stop
true
end
# Called on Ctrl-Z signal
# This method should be mainly used for "reload" (really!) actions like reloading passenger/spork/bundler/...
def reload
true
end
# Called on Ctrl-\ signal
# This method should be principally used for long action like running all specs/tests/...
def run_all
true
end
# Called on file(s) modifications
def run_on_change(paths)
true
end
end
end
Please take a look at the existing guards' source code for more concrete example and inspiration.
Alternatively, a new guard can be added inline to a Guardfile with this basic structure:
require 'guard/guard'
module ::Guard
class InlineGuard < ::Guard::Guard
def run_all
true
end
def run_on_change(paths)
true
end
end
end
Here is a very cool example by @avdi : http://avdi.org/devblog/2011/06/15/a-guardfile-for-redis
Development
- Source hosted at GitHub.
- Report issues and feature requests to GitHub Issues.
Pull requests are very welcome! Make sure your patches are well tested. Please create a topic branch for every separate change you make. Please do not change the version in your pull-request.
For questions please join us on our Google group or on #guard
(irc.freenode.net).