Fresh

Fresh is a command-line tool for hot reload that builds and (re)starts your written in Go application, including a web app, every time you save a .go or template file or any desired files you specify using configuration. It is not aiming to gracefully shutdown the server, but rather simply restart it, killing the other process.

Installation

• go install github.com/zzwx/fresh@latest - latest release.
• go install github.com/zzwx/fresh@master - bleeding edge.

History

This fork is taken from original fresh because the author, Andrea Franz, announced it as unmaintained. Several changes were pulled from the Roger Russel's fresher repository. All the authors are appropriately acknowledged using the git history. I kept the name fresh because it is easier to remember.

After installing with go install github.com/zzwx/fresh@latest, fresh can be started as simply fresh -g to generate a default config file. This prevents running fresh on an unexpected folder. When fresh runs on a folder that contains .fresh.yaml (default name), it will watch for file events, and every time you create / modify or delete a file it will build and restart the application.

If go build returns an error, it will create a log file in the ./tmp (configurable) folder and keep watching, attempting to rebuild. It will also attempt to kill previously created processes.

Fresh can be useful when building web apps on Windows versus go run . because the executable is not built at a temporary location, so Windows Firewall bothers only once with its popup window.

This fork aims to:

• Maintain fresh.
• Work with any folder separator, so that one configuration file can be used on different platforms without modification. Use '/' as path separator freely.
• Allow quotes " to surround names in the list of folders and files to ignore, and file extensions for more control over possible spaces and commas in the file names.
• Allow patterns like * and ** in the list of folders and files to ignore as well as other pattern symbols, defined by filepath.Match and doublestar for **.
• Have more control over ignoring:
  • Ignore sub-folders but not the folder itself and nor sub-sub-folders (using assets/*).
  • Ignore sub-folders and sub-sub-folders but not the folder itself (using assets/**).
  • Ignore wild-carded patterns (like bootstrap-*/**).
  • Ignore individual files to be ignored. If a file type is monitored, but a particular file of that type shouldn't (for instance, because it's auto-generated), there was no way to configure that.
• Use ignore instead of ignored in the settings. ignored still works for backward-compatibility.
• Set debug setting false to remove unnecessary output.
• Check for wrong settings names.
• Fix multi-line app output that skips the time app | header.
• Allow a trailing comma to be in the settings expecting lists without treating the last entry as an empty string.
• Set a prefix for environment variables that are set using fresh -e.
• Generate a ./fresh.yaml containing all default settings using fresh -g.
• Use module path as main_path instead of file path to let Go build main packages in sub-directories with enabled modules mode which has become a standard.
• Specify run_args and build_args separately.
  • build_args example: -race.
• Since v1.3.4:
  • Allow build_delay to be specified with units (1s, 100ms, 1000ns) and scientific notation. A simple number means nanoseconds.

Converting to yaml configuration allows for multi-line values (with at least one space padding on every line) to be used for long option values. Also, comments are possible after # symbol.

Backward Compatibility

For the most part, simple renaming of the runner.conf into .fresh.yaml should do the job. Then start fresh and check all the watched and ignored folders and files.

The biggest change from the original "fresh" is that the sub and sub-sub folders have to be specified more precisely.

Rename "ignored" to "ignore" if you like. You can split the values into several lines with at least one space for padding, due to yaml syntax.

In this edition, sub-folders of an ignored folder are not automatically ignored, unless a /** is used.

In short,

• Specifying just a as ignored results in:
  • a will be ignored
  • a/sub will not be ignored
  • s/sub/sub will not be ignored
• Specifying just s/* as ignored results in:
  • s will not be ignored
  • s/sub will be ignored
  • s/sub/sub will not be ignored
• Specifying just m/** as ignored results in:
  • m will not be ignored
  • m/sub will be ignored
  • m/sub/sub will be ignored

To emulate full ignore similar to the way it worked in original fresh, simply comma-separate a and a/**, which will make both the folder and all the sub and sub-sub folders ignored.

main_path

For the main_path to accept a sub-directory, it should be in a form of a module's exact path rather than a file path.

For example, if your go.mod lists the module as:

module something.com/your/path

And your sub-directory containing package main is under cmd, then set main_path as following:

main_path: "something.com/your/path/cmd"

If you don't do that, the error will show which is hard to search and get answers to:

can't load package: package cmd is not in GOROOT (...)

TODO: Attempt to leverage go list -m for relative paths

• For main_path to work as a relative path, fresh will have to grab the modules' main path.
• Attempt to build before watching for cases where the folder is not a go main module.

TODO: Hash folders

• Some editors save the files that haven't changed and that triggers rebuilding.

Changelog

• 1.3.3 - fresh won't run anymore on a folder that has no .fresh.yaml in it to prevent accidental execution.

Usage

Start fresh with default configuration file location:

$ fresh

Print a help:

$ fresh -help
Usage of fresh:
  -c string
        config file path (default "./.fresh.yaml")
  -e string
        environment variables prefix. "RUNNER_" is a default prefix
  -g    alias for -generate
  -generate
        generate a sample settings file either at "./.fresh.yaml" or at specified by -c location
  -h    print help page
  -v    alias for -version
  -version
        print current version and exit

fresh uses ./.fresh.yaml for configuration file location by default. If the file is not found, default settings will be used. An alternative config file path can be specified using -c:

$ fresh -c ./other.yaml

To generate a default ./.fresh.yaml, call fresh with -g flag. It can be combined with the -c to specify non-default output file name.

$ fresh -g
$ fresh -g -c ./other.yaml

To set a prefix for environment variables that are used (RUNNER_ is default):

$ fresh -e NEWRUNNER_

Here is a sample config file with the default settings:

version: 1 #
root: . # Root folder where the project is
main_path: # Module-style-path where main module is if not in root. example: example.com/name/cmd/
tmp_path: ./tmp # Default temporary folder in which the executable file will be generated and run from
build_name: runner-build # File name that will be built. exe will be automatically appended on Windows
build_args: # Build args
run_args: # Runtime args 
build_log: runner-build-errors.log # Log file name for build errors
valid_ext: .go, .tpl, .tmpl, .html # Extensions list for watching for changes
no_rebuild_ext: .tpl, .tmpl, .html # Extensions list to ignore rebuilding
ignore: # Ignore watching of both folders and individual files. Use * or ** and multiple lines for readability 
  assets,
  tmp, # Trailing comma will be auto-truncated. 
build_delay: 600 # Nanoseconds to wait after change before attempting to rebuild. Since v1.3.4 accepts 1e+9 forms and Duration format like 1s, 100ms, etc.
colors: true
log_color_main: cyan
log_color_build: yellow
log_color_runner: green
log_color_watcher: magenta
log_color_app:
debug: true # Set to false to make fresh less verbose

More examples can be seen here

Changes tracking

• Original repo
• Fresher repo

Contributing

1. Fork it
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create a new Pull Request