tGave more specific examples in the manpage - wendy - watch files/directories and run commands on any event
HTML git clone git://z3bra.org/wendy
DIR Log
DIR Files
DIR Refs
DIR README
DIR LICENSE
---
DIR commit 2d1d1f2a95c31e5e9849d6b6100c95d04c7c4877
DIR parent 3dec7f9619a5fd824a247260f5d1637a3a731643
HTML Author: z3bra <willy@mailoo.org>
Date: Tue, 14 Apr 2015 23:00:17 +0200
Gave more specific examples in the manpage
Those examples are meant to show the different use cases handled by
wendy, like handling multiple files or multiple masks.
I also precised a few behaviors in the OPTIONS section.
Diffstat:
M wendy.1 | 103 ++++++++++++++++++++++---------
1 file changed, 73 insertions(+), 30 deletions(-)
---
DIR diff --git a/wendy.1 b/wendy.1
t@@ -5,13 +5,13 @@
\- directory and file watcher based on inotify
.SH SYNOPSIS
.B wendy
-.RB [ \-l ]\ [ \-f
+.BI \-m\ mask
+.RB [ \-lv ]\ [ \-f
.IR file ]
.RB [ \-t
.IR timeout ]
.RB [ \-v ]
-.BI \-m\ mask
-.BI \-e\ command
+.BI [ \-e\ command\ [arg, ..]]
.SH DESCRIPTION
.B wendy
watches for events in a directory or its files and executes a command when an
t@@ -23,8 +23,19 @@ Outputs a list of masks
.B wendy
can watch for and their mask values.
.TP
+.B \-v
+Verbose.
+.B wendy
+will output the mask of the event caught, followed by a tab, and then the name
+of the file or directory that the event was caught in.
+.TP
.BI \-f\ file
-Specifies the file or directory to watch events in.
+Specifies the file or directory to watch events in. You can specify multiple files by providing multiple
+.B -f
+flags. If no file is specified, then
+.B wendy
+will read filenames from stdin.
+.TP
.BI \-t\ timeout
Sets the delay
.B wendy
t@@ -32,16 +43,16 @@ will check the file or directory for events.
.I timeout
is in seconds.
.TP
-.B \-v
-Verbose.
-.B wendy
-will output the mask of the event caught, followed by a tab, and then the name
-of the file or directory that the event was caught in.
-.TP
.BI \-m\ mask
Sets the mask of events to watch for. Refer to the
.B MASKS
-section of this manual page for more details.
+section of this manual page for more details. you can specify multiple masks by
+providing multiple
+.B -m
+flags. Flags are processed from left to right, so you can watch different masks
+on different nodes in a single command (Refer to the
+.B EXAMPLE
+section for examples on how to use this flag)
.TP
.BI \-e\ command
Execute
t@@ -75,34 +86,66 @@ IN_MOVE_SELF 2048
IN_ALL_EVENTS 4095
IN_UNMOUNT 8192
.TE
-.SS Watching for single events
-For example, a program writes to a log file
-.I progam.log
-in the home directory when an error
-occurs. There is not a log file there currently. Since the event to look for is
-a created file, the mask will be 256 for IN_CREATE.
-.nf
-wendy -m 256 -f ~ -e echo "The program has failed. Read the log."
+.SH EXAMPLES
+.SS Watching single events
+This command will watch
+.B IN_CREATE
+events in the given directory, and play a sounds whenever a file is created in
+this directory. This can be useful to get notified of new incoming emails
+(fetched locally)
+.nf
+wendy -m 256 -f ~/mail/INBOX/new -e play /usr/share/sound/bell.wav
.fi
-.B wendy
-will look for any file created in the home directory and echo a reminder to read
-the log there.
.SS Watching for multiple events
-As another example, a temporary directory is going to be watched for the
-movement of files in and out of there. The mask to use here will be an addition
-of the masks of the events to look out for: 64 (IN_MOVED_FROM) and 128
-(IN_MOVED_TO). This adds up to 192.
+To watch multiple events, you just need to sum them up before giving the mask to
+.B wendy
+\. For example, here is how you'd watch both
+.B IN_MOVED_FROM (64)
+and
+.B IN_MOVED_TO (128)
+events on a directory: 128 + 64 = 192
.nf
+wendy -m 192 -f ~/var/directory -v
+.fi
-wendy -m 192 -f ~/tmp -e echo "Files moved to or from ~/tmp."
+.SS Watching multiple files
+.B wendy
+gives you two different ways to watch multiple files. Either by providing
+multiple
+.B \-f
+flags, or by feeding it from stdin. Let's say you have the following structure:
+.nf
+ .
+ |-- Makefile
+ |-- library.c
+ |-- library.h
+ `-- program.c
+.fi
+If you want to automatically run
+.B make
+whenever a C source file is modified, you can use the following commands
+.nf
+wendy -m 8 -f library.c -f program.c -e make
+.fi
+OR
+.nf
+find -name '*.c' | wendy -m 8 -e make
+.fi
+.SS Using different masks on different files
+The order of the flags provided matters. So if you want to watch mutliple
+events, you can simply tidy the arguments to do what you want.
+This example will raise both
+.B IN_CREATE
+events in the given directory, and
+.B IN_ACCESS
+events on existing files
+.nf
+wendy -v -m 256 -f /var/log -m 1 -f /var/log/message -f /var/log/auth
.fi
-.B wendy
-will check in the temporary directory for if a file has been moved in or out of
-there and echo a reminder. As usual, the command to run can be anything.
.SH SEE ALSO
.BR inotify (7)