User-defined resources for the --watch option

[bretkikehara]

This will allow compilation of files other than .js, .css, and .json files using the shifter --watch command. Basically, I want to watch for any changes in LESS files so that the a module's CSS is updated automatically.

This command will commonly be used in conjunction with the "exec" option in a module's build.json.

An example build.json:

{
    "name": "module",
    "exec": [
        "less-compile"
    ],
    "builds": {
        "module": {
            "jsfiles": ["module.js"],
            "skinnable": true
        }
    }
}

How to use:

This can be added to the .shifter.json file:

{
    "watched-extensions" : {
        ".less": true,
        ".js": true,
        ".json": true
    }
}

or alternatively,

shifter --watch js --watch less --watch json

Known issues:

Currently, CSS and LESS files cannot be watched together else shifter will indicate that the CSS file has been changed too quickly. This is why the previous example does not watch CSS, only LESS.

[derek]

Nice idea.

I'd prefer to see --watch accept a String as opposed to a Boolean, it seems redundant to specify --watch and --watched-type together as the latter implies the first should be true.

Also, IMO it also seems unnatural to specify an escaped JSON string in the CLI arguments, so I'd rather see additional --watch arguments for each extension, and nopt will turn it into an array when it parses the arguments list.

For example...

Defaults to watching .css, .js, and .json

--watch 

Ignores defaults, only watches .less

--watch less

Ignores defaults, watches .less and .js

--watch less --watch js

This way, you don't have to specify which extensions you don't want to watch, just the ones you do. I guess it would be possible to add in support for --no-watch, but that seems unnecessary at the moment.

Under the hood in the .shifter.json config, getting picky I'd prefer watched-extensions, but otherwise the implementation seems sound.

[evocateur]

I concur with @derek's comments. nopt is full of win.

[caridy]

Yogi does the watching, closing this.