README.rdoc

Guard¶ ↑

Guard is a command line tool to easly handle events on files modifications.

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)

• Polling for others (help us to support more systems)

• Super fast change detection (when polling not used)

• Automatic files modifications detection (even new files are detected)

• Growl notification (growlnotify & growl gem required)

• Libnotify notification (libnotify gem required)

• Tested on Ruby 1.8.6, 1.8.7 & 1.9.2

Install¶ ↑

Install the gem:

gem install guard

Add it to your Gemfile (inside test group):

gem 'guard'

Generate an empty Guardfile with:

guard init

Add guard(s) you need (see available guards below)

On Mac OS X¶ ↑

Install rb-fsevent for FSEvent support

gem install rb-fsevent

Install growl for Growl notification support

gem install growl

And add it to you Gemfile

gem 'growl'

On Linux¶ ↑

Install rb-inotify for inotify support

gem install rb-inotify

Install libnotify for libonity notification support

gem install libnotify

And add it to you Gemfile

gem 'libnotify'

Usage¶ ↑

Just launch Guard inside your ruby/rails project with:

guard

Shell can be cleared after each change with:

guard -c

Options list is available with:

guard help [TASK]

Signal handlers are used to interact with Guard:

• Ctrl-C - Quit Guard (call stop guard(s) method before)

• Ctrl-\ - Call run_all guard(s) method

• Ctrl-Z - Call reload guard(s) method

Available Guards¶ ↑

• guard-rspec

• guard-test

• guard-minitest

• guard-livereload

• guard-sass

• guard-compass

• guard-shell

• guard-bundler

• guard-passenger

guard ideas:

• guard-spork

• guard-cucumber

• others ideas?

Add a guard to your Guardfile¶ ↑

Add it to your Gemfile (inside test group):

gem '<guard-name>'

Add guard definition to your Guardfile by running this command:

guard init <guard-name>

You are good to go!

Create a guard¶ ↑

Create a new guard is very easy, just create a new gem with this basic structure:

lib/
  guard/
    guard-name/
      templates/
        Guardfile (needed for guard init <guard-name>)
    guard-name.rb

lib/guard/guard-name.rb inherit from guard/guard and should overwrite at least one of the five guard methods. Example:

require 'guard'
require 'guard/guard'

module Guard
  class GuardName < Guard

    # ================
    # = Guard method =
    # ================

    # Call once when guard starts
    def start
      true
    end

    # Call with Ctrl-C signal (when Guard quit).
    # This method must return a true value
    # if everything went well or guard will not stop.
    def stop
      true
    end

    # Call with Ctrl-Z signal
    def reload
      true
    end

    # Call with Ctrl-/ signal
    def run_all
      true
    end

    # Call on file(s) modifications
    def run_on_change(paths)
      true
    end

  end
end

Looks at available guards code for more concrete example.

Guardfile DSL¶ ↑

Guardfile DSL consists of just two simple methods: guard & watch. Example:

guard 'rspec', :version => 2 do
  watch('^spec/(.*)_spec.rb')
  watch('^lib/(.*)\.rb')        { |m| "spec/lib/#{m[1]}_spec.rb" }
  watch('^spec/spec_helper.rb') { "spec" }
  watch('^spec/spec_helper.rb') { `say hello` }
end

• “guard” method allow to add a guard with an optional options hash

• “watch” method allow to define which files are supervised per this guard. A optional block can be added to overwrite path sending to run_on_change guard method or launch simple command.

TODO¶ ↑

• Add more specs, help are welcome because I’m not sure about how to test stuff like this :-)

Development¶ ↑

• Source hosted at GitHub

• Report issues/Questions/Feature requests on 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.

Authors¶ ↑

Thibaud Guillaume-Gentil