Serve

A utility to serve files to localhost, auto-reloading index.html on file change.

Features:

• Simple implementation in Java 8 with NO DEPENDENCIES: 12kb download.
• Similar Node.js modules pull in hundreds to thousands (!!) of potentially insecure packages.
• Implemented with standard NIO SocketChannels and Buffers; startup is fast.
• Minimal resource usage: < 1mb memory with native WatchService, 3mb otherwise.

Download

serve.jar

Run It!

Serve is a simple executable jar... run however you'd like. I recommend:

java -Xmx3m -XX:+UseSerialGC -jar serve.jar

To use port other than 8085:

java -jar serve.jar <port>

To create an alias in .bash_profile:

mv serve.jar ~/serve.jar
echo 'alias serve="java -Xmx3m -XX:+UseSerialGC -jar ~/serve.jar"' >> .bash_profile

Implementation Notes:

• Unfortunately Java's WatchService updates slowly on Mac without registering with the jdk-internal com.sun.nio.file.SensitivityWatchEventModifier.HIGH modifier. Hopefully this is fixed since it's a popular issue on SO (https://stackoverflow.com/questions/9588737/is-java-7-watchservice-slow-for-anyone-else).

• How to close AWT EventQueue, which seems to persist after calling Desktop.getDesktop()?