loopozorg

Infrastructure for executing shell commands on file modification.

When writing code, you often have to take an additional action to see results of what you've just written. This is true regardless you write Python, Ruby, C, JavaScript, Markdown or LaTeX -- after making a change in source code, you have to run compiler, interpreter, validator, test suite... or simply refresh browser. These activities are distracting and force you to do too many things--like switching to terminal, reentering previous command and going back to editor--just to discover you didn't put a semicolon at the end of that stupid line.

loopozorg is ⌘S instead of ⌘S ⌘⇥ ↑ ↩ ⌘⇥. It lets you write short, reusable Python scripts (or ad hoc loops right in your shell) that track given files and execute shell commands when these files are modified. Even if you don't know Python, you will be able to write your own loops just by looking at examples.

Example

(code speaks louder than words)

$ cat ~/.loops/python.py
from loopozorg import Loop
Loop('python {main_file} {args}; pyflakes {tracked_files}')

$ loop python pacman.py ghosts.py --waka-waka

Or ad hoc:

$ loop 'python {main_file} {args}; pyflakes {tracked_files}' \
  pacman.py ghosts.py --waka-waka

Visit ~narfdotpl/.loops for more examples.

Features

• reusable, real-life loop scripts in two lines of code
• ad hoc loops right in your shell
• file creation with basic template support
• ability to automatically open file in editor before starting a loop
• Python

Overview

The idea behind loopozorg is simple: you save sequence of shell commands in a file and put it in ~/.loops/ directory. This file is a Python script. It imports and instantiates a Loop object. By default, Loop parses command line parameters that script is called with. It expects them to be in the following format:

[+] [file1 file2 ...] [-arg1 arg2 ...]

All parameters are optional. The first one is a plus and it's called "special". It is followed by file paths. Arguments are at the end, first of them has to start with a minus.

You can access parsed parameters via Loop attributes:

• raw -- string representing all parameters
• passed_special -- boolean indicating whether first parameter is a plus
• tracked_files -- list of file paths
• args -- string representing arguments

Loop also provides two properties (attributes that you can't change):

• main_file -- first tracked file
• bin -- main file without extension

Loop properties and attributes--both built-in and created by you--can be used as replacement fields in your commands (see Step by step example section).

There are two ways of using Loop:

1. You can instantiate it with a single string argument, which is the command that will be executed. In this case there is no need to assign returned object to any variable, because command is passed to the run method, which starts an infinite loop.

2. You can instantiate it without any arguments, change attributes of returned object (and/or add new) and manually call the run method with desired set of arguments (see its docstring for more information).

Apart from parsing parameters, another thing that loopozorg does by defualt is creating main file using template and opening it in editor. loopozorg does this if loop script is run with special parameter ("+"); you can disable this feature by calling run method with enable_special=False argument. File creation and template support is described in Step by step example section; here I'll focus on opening files in editor. loopozorg uses environment variable $EDIT to do this. You should set it according to $EDITOR. It should open editor in background -- $EDITOR usually opens it in foreground, which holds the loop.

loopozorg provides a convenient loop script runner, called loop. See Step by step example and Installation sections for usage and installation information.

Step by step example

Your first loop

Suppose you write a lot of Python. There's a loop for that:

$ cat - > ~/.loops/python.py
from loopozorg import Loop
Loop('python {main_file} {args}; pyflakes {tracked_files}')
^D

While writing such code is not a best Python practice (loop would start, had someone imported this file), it's perfectly valid and does the job in two lines of code. Now you can run a pacman.py script with

$ loop python pacman.py

It will be executed every time you save it. Also, PyFlakes will tell you if your code has any defects. (You can also run this loop like you would run any Python script -- with python ~/.loops/python.py pacman.py command).

File creation and template support

What if there's no pacman.py file? Well, if you run

$ loop python + pacman.py

loopozorg will check, whether pacman.py exists. If it does, loopozorg will open it in editor. If it doesn't exist, loopozorg will try to create it using a template named after loop script you're using (in this case it would try to use ~/.loops/templates/python.txt). If there's no template, an empty file will be created. After creating a file, loopozorg will open it in editor.

Many tracked files

If you want to add another file to your project, run

$ loop python pacman.py ghosts.py

Every time you save any of these two files, pacman.py will be executed and both files will be checked by PyFlakes.

Arguments

You can pass arguments to your scripts. They have to be placed after file paths and first argument has to start with a minus -- otherwise it will be interpreted as another file path. So if you want to execute pacman.py script with a --waka-waka argument, run

$ loop python pacman.py --waka-waka

Rule them all

Of course, all loopozorg features can be used together:

$ loop python + pacman.py ghosts.py --waka-waka

Shortcut

If you don't feel like creating full-blown script for a really short or temporary loop, you can call loop with your command as the first argument (instead of loop name), e.g.:

$ loop 'python {main_file} {args}; pyflakes {tracked_files}' \
  + pacman.py ghosts.py --waka-waka

Installation

Following installation notes are guidelines, not instructions -- stop, if you don't know what you're doing. Python (2.6 <= version < 3.0) is required.

1. get loopozorg

   $ mkdir ~/.loops
   $ cd !$
   $ git clone http://github.com/narfdotpl/loopozorg.git
   

2. put loop in your $PATH (optional)

   $ ln -s ~/.loops/loopozorg/loop ~/bin
   

3. set $EDIT (optional)

   $ cat - >> ~/.profile
   export EDIT="mvim"
   ^D
   

Meta

loopozorg is written by Maciej Konieczny. This software is released into the public domain and uses semantic versioning for release numbering.