Golang folder watcher and command runner

The Watcher

The recursive file watcher. That runs a command based on the command you give it. Checks if you're running inside of command or powershell on windows. Or defaults to sh.

I didn't have something easy to use on Windows 10. Everything wanted me to have extra steps. What better way to practice. Just building the tool myself.

The goal is for a windows folder watcher for my golang development.

Table of Contents

• Examples
• Project Setup
• Project Breakdown

---

Examples

After the program is compiled for your Operating System. You should be able to use it like ./watcher -d /path/to/directory -c "clear; go run hello.go"

Project Setup

How was the project setup from scratch?

• Setup a project folder watcher
• cd watcher
• go mod init github.com/YOURUSERNAME/directory_watcher - This sets up the module folder to allow downloads into. Without it, we cannot run go get github.com/fsnotify/fsnotify
• go get github.com/fsnotify/fsnotify
• vim watcher.go - this is where we will put the program
• ./watcher -d /path/to/directory -c "clear; go run hello.go" - This is the use of the command.
  • -d: directory to watch
  • -c: commands to run

watcher.go:

package main

import (
	"flag"
	"fmt"
	"log"
	"os"
	"os/exec"
	"path/filepath"
	"runtime"
	"strings"
	"sync"
	"time"

	"github.com/fsnotify/fsnotify"
	"github.com/mitchellh/go-ps"
)

var debounceDuration = 5000 * time.Millisecond

func debounce(execution func(), duration time.Duration) func() {
	var timer *time.Timer
	var mu sync.Mutex

	return func() {
		mu.Lock()
		defer mu.Unlock()

		if timer != nil {
			timer.Stop()
		}

		timer = time.AfterFunc(duration, execution)
	}
}

func getParentShell() (string, error) {
	proc, err := ps.FindProcess(os.Getppid())
	if err != nil {
		return "", err
	}
	return proc.Executable(), nil
}

func main() {
	dirFlag := flag.String("d", ".", "Directory to watch for changes")
	cmdFlag := flag.String("c", "", "Shell command to run on file changes")
	flag.Parse()
	dirToWatch := *dirFlag
	commandToRun := *cmdFlag

	// Check if the directory exists
	if _, err := os.Stat(dirToWatch); os.IsNotExist(err) {
		log.Fatalf("Directory %s does not exist\n", dirToWatch)
	}

	// Create a new watcher
	watcher, err := fsnotify.NewWatcher()
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatal(err)
	}
	defer watcher.Close()

	// Add directories and subdirectories to the watcher
	err = filepath.Walk(dirToWatch, func(path string, info os.FileInfo, err error) error {
		if info.IsDir() {
			err = watcher.Add(path)
			if err != nil {
				log.Fatal(err)
			}
		}
		return nil
	})
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatal(err)
	}

	fmt.Printf("Watching directory: %s\n", dirToWatch)

	executeCommand := func() {
		if commandToRun != "" {
			var cmd *exec.Cmd
			if runtime.GOOS == "windows" {
				shell, err := getParentShell()
				if err != nil {
					log.Fatalf("Failed to detect parent shell: %s\n", err)
				}

				if strings.Contains(strings.ToLower(shell), "powershell") ||
				strings.Contains(strings.ToLower(shell), "pwsh") {
					cmd = exec.Command("powershell.exe", "-Command", commandToRun)
				} else {
					cmd = exec.Command("cmd.exe", "/C", commandToRun)
				}
			} else {
				cmd = exec.Command("sh", "-c", commandToRun)
			}
			cmd.Dir = dirToWatch
			cmd.Stdout = os.Stdout
			cmd.Stderr = os.Stderr

			err := cmd.Run()
			if err != nil {
				log.Printf("Command execution failed: %s\n", err)
			}
		}
	}

	debouncedExecuteCommand := debounce(executeCommand, debounceDuration)

	// Process file system events
	for {
		select {
		case event := <-watcher.Events:
			if event.Op&fsnotify.Write == fsnotify.Write || event.Op&fsnotify.Create == fsnotify.Create {
				relativePath, _ := filepath.Rel(dirToWatch, event.Name)
				log.Printf("File changed: %s\n", relativePath)
				debouncedExecuteCommand()
			}
		case err := <-watcher.Errors:
			log.Printf("Watcher error: %s\n", err)
		}
	}
}

This first section is just the import statement. What do we want to include?

package main

import (
	"flag"
	"fmt"
	"log"
	"os"
	"os/exec"
	"path/filepath"
	"runtime"
	"sync"
	"time"

	"github.com/fsnotify/fsnotify"
	"github.com/mitchellh/go-ps"
)

• flag: how we will digest -c and -d or any other flags we would like to have
• fmt: Standard package that provides formatted I/O operations, similar to C's printf and scanf.
• log: For logging messages. I could also use fmt with println but it doesn't have extra features like error handling. Log is more full featured on those fronts.
• os: Provides a platform-independent interface to operating system functionality
• os/exec: Our interface to perform executed commands on the system
• path/filename: This is how we will manipulate the files
• runtime: This is how we can interact with the runtime system. Garbage collection, scheduling, and other low-level components
• sync: Provides synchronization primitive, such as Mutexes and WaitGroups, for coordinating the execution of multiple Goroutines.These primitives help you avoid race conditions and ensure that your concurrent code is safe and efficient. Mutexes are used to protect shared resources from concurrent access
• time:
• github.com/fsnotify/fsnotify: This is the package that will watch the directory and alert for changes.
• github.com/mitchellh/go-ps: This checks the current process being used to we can tell if it's powershell or not

Now that we understand the imports at the top we can work on the debounce functionality.

var debounceDuration = 5000 * time.Millisecond

func debounce(execution func(), duration time.Duration) func() {
	var timer *time.Timer
	var mu sync.Mutex

	return func() {
		mu.Lock()
		defer mu.Unlock()

		if timer != nil {
			timer.Stop()
		}

		timer = time.AfterFunc(duration, execution)
	}
}

What is really going on in here? Let's break it down step by step.