Automatic builds with some inotify magic

Posted on Nov 26, 2009

The inotify feature in the linux kernel allows you to receive events about changed files. Using pyinotify, here is a simple script to watch for changes to source code and run "make". Everything is hard coded right now, and since I was using CMake with out-of-source builds, the directory structure is that way. It also uses the command line notify-send tool to display notifications. Perhaps some day I will make it configurable and more useful.

Cheers.



# Notification tool
# Run with the directory to watch
# currently hardcoded to use 
#
# +
# |- src - contains source code and is monitored
# |- build - assumes build to be here
#
# (c) 2009, Nikhil Marathe 
# Licensed under the MIT License

import sys
import os
import subprocess
import re
from pyinotify import WatchManager, Notifier, ProcessEvent, IN_MODIFY

wm = WatchManager()

class Compile( ProcessEvent ):
    def process_IN_MODIFY( self, event ):
        print event.path, event.name, event.mask & IN_MODIFY

        if re.match( '[a-zA-Z]*.cpp', event.name ):
            os.chdir( event.path.replace( 'src', 'build' ) )
            ex = subprocess.call( 'make' )
            subprocess.call( ['notify-send', "Build output", "%s" % ( ex == 0 and "Success" or "Error" )] )

c = Compile()
notifier = Notifier( wm, c )
wm.add_watch( sys.argv[1], IN_MODIFY, rec=True )

notifier.loop()