Question

I am currently using this node.js command to watch coffeescript files for changes and compile them to a folder:

coffee -cwo ./js ./src

I wonder if there is a way to watch a folder/files for changes and if there is a change, run a compiled js file.

In this way I don’t have to manually run “coffee file.coffee” each time I made a change in coffeescript files.

Answer 1

You can either save the compiled JS or run it with a single coffee command, but not both. The command to run the .coffee files in src every time they change is simply

coffee -w src

For more complex compilation needs, you should write a Cakefile. Check out the one in sstephenson’s node-coffee-project, for instance. That way, you can customize the whole compilation pipeline for your project’s needs, e.g. compile -> run tests -> run the project if tests passed.