Guard Plugins

(Order: by area: popularity among beginners or ideally by star count)

NOTE: some plugin authors work on their own forks instead of the forks in the Guard organization. Please update the links below if they point to the wrong/outdated fork.

Rails related

Plugin	When to use
guard-jammit	Compressing assets (JS, CSS)
guard-zeus	Zeus speeds up startup time for Rails commands (development, server, testing)
guard-annotate	Inserts "cheatsheets" about your database schema into your source files
guard-passenger	Manages the Passenger server (restarts when necessary)
guard-sprockets	Recompiles assets using Sprockets
guard-migrate	Migrates the database whenever you add/change migrations
guard-brakeman	Scans your Rails application for known security holes (CVE's)
guard-rails_best_practices	check if code matches Rails Best Practices

General Web Development & Design

Plugin	When to use
guard-jekyll-plus	Extensive plugin for working with Jekyll projects
guard-middleman	Rebuilds Middleman static websites
guard-coffeescript	Compiles CoffeeScript files
guard-compass	Rebuilds your CSS files in Compass Sass projects
guard-sass	Recompiles Sass files to CSS
guard-steering	Speed up Handlebar.js templates by precompiling them
guard-webrick	Restarts WEBrick server when needed
guard-pusher	Send messages to multiple iPad/iPhone browsers (like "reload page")
guard-shopify	automatically upload and update Shopify templates when they change
guard-slim	regenerate slim templates
guard-premailer	inline CSS in email templates
guard-uglify	compress JavaScript files using uglifier gem

Testing

Plugin	When to use
guard-cucumber	Reruns changed/affected Cucumber Features
guard-teaspoon	Web testing with PhantomJS or Selenium WebDriver
guard-motion	reruns specs for RubyMotion (iOS, Android, OSX Ruby apps)
guard-phpunit	Guard::PHPUnit automatically runs your tests
guard-frank	rerun Frank-Cucumber (iOS) features
guard-calabash-ios	return Calabash iOS Cucumber features
guard-jasmine-headless-webkit	rerun Jasmine tests in a headless WebKit instance
guard-jasmine-node	reruns Jasmine Node.js tests
guard-jenkins	sets a Jenkins status image depending whether there's a failure or not
guard-prove	reruns Perl tests

Code Quality

Plugin	When to use
guard-cane	fails the build if your source files fail the quality level
guard-rubocop	Check your source files to style violations and potential problems
guard-jshint-node	detect errors and potential problems in JavaScript files

Documentation

Plugin	When to use
guard-hologram	generates beautiful style guides for CSS
guard-docbook-status	update docbook document overviews (structure stats)
guard-readme-on-github	preview GitHub pages locally before pushing them to GH
guard-rocco	regenerates Rocco docs
guard-gimli	convert markup files (markdown, rdoc) into PDF files
guard-git-scribe	rebuild git-scribe ebooks
guard-markdown	convert Markdown files to HTML

DevOps

Plugin	When to use
guard-s3	Synchronize folders with Amazon S3 buckets
guard-puppet	Helps build Puppet catalogs for deploying and managing sites and servers
guard-chef	watches and reloads Chef recipes automatically
guard-flopbox	synchronize directories via SFTP

Utility

Plugin	When to use
guard-ctags-bundler	regenerates CTags files so editors can find method definitions
guard-shell	Runs shell commands when changes happen - also supports notifications and long -running programs
guard-go	Run and restart go programs and servers when changed
guard-rake	reruns a rake task when files change
guard-redis	restarts Redis server when needed
guard-rsync	automatically sync directories with RSync whenever they change
guard-resque	restarts Resque workers
guard-delayed	automatically restarts delayed_job workers
guard-sprite-factory	Web Development
guard-post	automatically load text files into database records (Mongoid, ActiveRecord, etc.)
guard-lilypond	Engraving music scores
guard-zen	Runs Ruby Koans

NOTE: if any above plugins are broken or outdated, try the following:

1. find the gem on rubygems.org, then go to the homepage
2. file an issue there and wait up to a few days for the author to respond
3. if the plugin author isn't responding CC a Guard maintainer in the issue (e.g. me: @e2)

Outdated/Obsolete plugins

Outdated Plugin	Why outdated/obsolete
guard-spring	guard-rspec supports running RSpec with Spring and a lot more
guard-rails-assets	not sure if it works with Rails 4
guard-jekyll	superseeded by guard-jekyll-plus
guard-rspectacle	Embedded RSpec runner - probably better to use Guard::Rspec or Guard::Zeus
guard-coffeedripper	probably outdated
guard-focus	probably can be replaces with Guard::RSpec with custom config
guard-jessie	likely superseeded by guard-jasmine
guard-stitch	alternative to guard-sprockets, but may be outdated
guard-db	probably replaced with guard-migrate
Rails-Autotester	probably replaced with Guard::Minitest
guard-sprockets2	probably outdated
guard-hydra	probably replaced with Guard::RSpec using parallel specs (check Guard::RSpec Readme)
guard-ego	Guard can now reload itself
guard-jslint-on-rails	probably outdated
guard-mozrepl	probably superseeded by Guard::LiveReload
guard-jstd	probably superseeded by other JavaScript testing Guard plugins
guard-phantomjs	probably superseeded by other JavaScript testing Guard plugins
guard-krl	updates cloud-based Kinetic Rules Engine rule files (company dissolved)
guard-soca	likely outdated
guard-stendhal	likely outdated
guard-autorefresh	superseeded by Guard::LiveReload