mynyml/watchr

Health v2 · maintenance only

Flags: no_releases

Adoption not part of the score

1272 stars · 74 forks observed · 2026-08-28

What it is AI-extracted, prompt v1, taxonomy v1, 2026-08-30, confidence not recorded

Watchr is a Ruby command-line tool that monitors a directory tree and triggers user-defined actions whenever observed files change, most commonly for continuous testing. It is a flexible, framework-agnostic alternative to Autotest, driven by simple Ruby scripts using a `watch(pattern, &action)` DSL.

Use cases

• run tests automatically whenever a file is saved
• watch a directory tree and trigger a command on file changes
• continuous testing without being locked into a specific test framework
• flexible autotest alternative for Ruby projects
• rebuild or rerun scripts on file modification
• monitor files across Linux, macOS, BSD, Solaris, and Windows

When to choose

• you want continuous testing that works with any test framework or Ruby interpreter
• you need a simple, scriptable file-watching tool with a tiny DSL
• you want to replace Autotest with something more flexible and framework-agnostic

When to avoid

• you need an actively maintained tool - the latest release dates to 2011
• you need file watching in a non-Ruby ecosystem with first-class support
• you want modern features like parallel test runs or rich reporting

Facets

cli-tool · maturity abandoned

testing cli developer-tools testing developer-tools windows bsd cli ruby continuous-testing file-watcher autotest-alternative ruby-gem file-monitoring command-line automation linux macos

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markdown · JSON · MCP: product_card(name="mynyml/watchr")