The primary purpose of wexec is to reduce (or completely remove)
compilation times.
wexec reads and ignores all data arriving on standard input, and,
after a period of inactivity on standard input, executes a particular
command.
Example:
echo test | wexec -s 1 -n 500000000 -c "echo hi"
If lines are supplied on standard input, followed by 1.5 seconds of nothing arriving on standard input, "hi" will be displayed on the screen.
I built this in about 20 minutes for a single purpose: to automatically build software. Here is how I use it.
I use the bundled script called wmake, which uses the inotifywait
command to recursively monitor the file system. The inotifywait
command will report on changes to the file system in real time, but
quite often many files are changed at the same time (e.g., the editor
vim replaces files rather than rewriting them, causing multiple
inotify events), and it's not economically to build a project multiple
times in the space of second.
So I run this in one terminal:
wmake
And I edit code in another terminal.
vim thing.c
As soon as I type ":w" into vim, my entire project is rebuilt.
wexec by itself requires nothing. wmake requires inotify tools.
To install:
make install