Monitor files for changes and rerun specified script

Monitors specified directories for file changes and reruns a designated R script when changes are detected. It's designed to automate the process of reloading your R applications during development, similar to nodemon for Node.js.

Usage

monitor(
  dir = getwd(),
  file,
  ext = "*",
  monitor_hidden = TRUE,
  exclude_files = NULL,
  exclude_patterns = NULL,
  exclude_dirs = NULL,
  delay = 1
)

Arguments

dir: Character vector. Directory or directories to monitor for changes. Defaults to the current working directory.
file: String, file path. Path to the R script to rerun when changes are detected.
ext: Character vector. File extensions to watch. "*" (the default) watches all files in dir.
monitor_hidden: Logical. Should hidden files be monitored for changes? Default is TRUE. Hidden files are those whose names start with a dot eg. .Renviron, .env, etc. This option is especially helpful when ext = "*".
exclude_files: Character vector. Specific files to ignore. Changes to these files will not trigger a script rerun. Default is NULL.
exclude_patterns: Character vector. File name patterns to ignore. Any files in dir with names matching these patterns will be ignored. Default is NULL.
exclude_dirs: Character vector. Directories to exclude from monitoring. Default is NULL.
delay: Numeric. Number of seconds to wait before checking for file changes. Defaults to 1.

Details

The monitoring process can be customized by excluding specific files, file patterns, or entire directories. This allows you to ignore changes to files that shouldn't trigger a reload (eg. temporary files, log files, etc.).

If multiple directories are supplied, file is assumed to be in the first directory.

The function runs indefinitely until interrupted.

Examples

if (FALSE) { # \dontrun{
# monitor current directory, rerun 'app.R' on changes, ignore 'dev.R' and
# any files in 'test/' directory:
rmon::monitor(
  dir = ".",
  file = "app.R",
  exclude_files = "dev.R",
  exclude_dirs = "test"
)

# monitor multiple directories, watch only `.R` & `.Rmd` files:
rmon::monitor(
  dir = c("src", "scripts"),
  file = "main.R",
  ext = c(".R", ".Rmd")
)
} # }