iwatch is a small linux command line tool that automatically runs a command every time a file is changed. I've written it for myself several years ago (can't remember when exactly) and have been using it ever since. Actually for a rather lot of stuff. So maybe it's also useful for someone out there too. You can download the C source on GitHub.
Compile it with make iwatch. Or if you don't like make you can directly use GCC in C99 mode: gcc -std=c99 iwatch.c -o iwatch. It's a rather simple tool so it's just one source file (~80 LoC).
Basic usage is something like this:
iwatch files... command
As soon as one of the files is changes command is executed. That's it, no fancy other stuff.
Most of the time I use it to run a test suite as soon as some source files are saved in the text editor. Something like this runs in a terminal somewhere where I can see it:
iwatch tree.c tree.h "make tests/tree_test && ./tests/tree_test"
Whenever tree.c or tree.h are saved in the text editor the test suite is run. When all is fine a green line shows up, otherwise some compiler errors or a red line (and some other stuff) smile at me.
It's rather nice to get immediate feedback during development. Kind of makes testing way more smooth and a normal part of writing code. I grew attached to this "zen testing" stuff in the Ruby world. And hey, why not do it in C, too? Then you have some kind of static type checking (well, C) and testing. It actually makes fun to write C code this way (still sounds weird…).
Apart from programming I also use iwatch for "office" stuff. Well, actually for converting markdown text to a PDF as soon as the markdown file is saved.
iwatch paper.md paper.css "markdown paper.md && prince -s paper.css paper.html"
As soon as the markdown or CSS file is saved the markdown is converted to HTML and then to a PDF (with Prince and a few lines of CSS). I usually view the PDF with the default GNOME PDF viewer (Evince) and it does update the view every time the PDF changes. This gives pretty much instant view of the finished PDF every time the markdown file is saved. Kind of the live preview of some LaTeX editors.
These are the two situations where I use iwatch regularly. I use it on some other occasions, e.g. keeping it running in a screen to update statistics every time a website creates a file in a directory. Simple tool but can be combined with a lot of different stuff. :)
Oh, about the name. It uses inotify to watch for file changes so "iwatch" it is. This piece of C code is rather old, from a time before fanotify was known. So it has nothing to do with something declared as "smart" or any real watches.
I actually wanted to extend the tool before publishing it. Adding a way to insert the name of the changed file into the command, maybe using fanotify, etc. However it already does it's job quite well for me. So if someone needs a bit more feel free to throw in some lines of C code.