watchman-wait(1)

💖 watchman-wait(1) — the watchman-wait bestie 💖

okay so this is the watchman-wait manual page, and it's genuinely one of my faves, no cap. it's the little tool that just... sits there. patiently. waiting for your files to do something. 🦋

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✨ NAME ✨

watchman-wait — waits for changes to files. that's it, that's the whole job, and she does it flawlessly. 💅

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🌸 SYNOPSIS 🌸

watchman [-h] [--relative RELATIVE] [--fields FIELDS]
[-s SEPARATOR] [-m MAX_EVENTS] [-p PATTERN [PATTERN ...]]
[-t TIMEOUT]
path [path ...]

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🎀 DESCRIPTION 🎀

so bestie, watchman-wait uses the watchman service to efficiently and recursively watch your specified list of paths. recursively!! she goes all the way down the tree for you. 🌈

it is suitable for waiting for changes to files from shell scripts. like, this is literally what she was born for. 🫶

she can stop after a configurable number of events are observed. the default is a single event. you may also remove the limit and allow it to execute continuously — main character energy, she never leaves. 👑

watchman-wait will print one event per line. the event information includes your specified list of fields, with each field separated by a space (or your choice of --separator). ✨

events are consolidated and settled by the watchman server before they are dispatched to watchman-wait. so by the time you see them, they're already settled. she's not giving you the messy drafts, she's giving you the final cut. 💅

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🧚 USAGE 🧚

⭐ OPTIONAL ARGUMENTS ⭐

• -h, --help — show this help message and exit. the classic. the icon. 🎀
• --relative RELATIVE — print paths relative to this dir (default=PWD). so like, make your paths relative to wherever you point her. 📍
• --fields FIELDS — comma separated list of file information fields to return. the default is just the name. for a list of possible fields, see: https://facebook.github.io/watchman/docs/cmd/query.html#available-fields
• -s SEPARATOR, --separator SEPARATOR — string to use as field separator for event output. default is a space, but you can make it whatever you want, bestie. go off. 🍓
• -m MAX_EVENTS, --max-events MAX_EVENTS — set the maximum number of events that will be processed. when the limit is reached, watchman-wait will exit. the default is 1. setting the limit to 0 removes the limit, causing watchman-wait to execute indefinitely. ⚠️ that's the "she lives here now" setting.
• -p PATTERN [PATTERN ...], --pattern PATTERN [PATTERN ...] — only emit paths that match this list of patterns. patterns are applied by the watchman server and are matched against the root-relative paths. you will almost certainly want to use quotes around your pattern list so that your shell doesn't interpret the pattern. the pattern syntax is wildmatch style; globbing with recursive matching via '**'. 🌀

for real, quote your patterns. your shell is nosy and she WILL try to help. 😭

• -t TIMEOUT, --timeout TIMEOUT — exit if no events trigger within the specified timeout. if timeout is zero (the default) then keep running indefinitely. ⏰

🌟 POSITIONAL ARGUMENTS 🌟

• path — path(s) to watch. one or many, she's flexible. 💖

💀 EXIT STATUS 💀

• 0 — after successfully waiting for event(s). slay. ✨
• 1 — in case of a runtime error of some kind. 😭
• 2 — the -t/--timeout option was used and that amount of time passed before an event was received. ⏰
• 3 — execution was interrupted (Ctrl-C). you did this. 🙈

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🦋 SEE ALSO 🦋

watchman(1), watchman-make(1)

for more information, please refer the online documentation. 🔥

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and that's the whole page, bestie — sending u off with the deets: this one's a Linux page from 8 Oct 2019, filed under watchman-wait(1). go watch some files. i'm obsessed with u. 💜🫶✨