node-dev

node-dev

Node-dev is a development tool for Node.js that automatically restarts the node process when a script is modified.

It's an alternative to tools like supervisor or nodemon that doesn't require any configuration. Just run node-dev foo.js as you would normally run node and it will automatically figure out which files need to be watched.

You may also use node-dev with CoffeeScript or LiveScript apps. Just run node-dev app.coffee or node-dev app.ls. You may also register additional language flavors by adding them to the extensions list in your .node-dev.json config file.

Desktop Notifications

Status and error messages can be displayed as desktop notification using either Growl or libnotify.

Installation

Node-dev can be installed via npm:

npm install -g node-dev

In order to use Growl notifications growlnotify must be installed on your system.

Settings

Upon startup node-dev looks for a .node-dev.json file in the user's HOME directory. It will also look for a .node-dev.json file in the current directory which – if present – overwrites the global settings.

• vm – Whether to watch files loaded via Node's VM module. Default: true
• fork – Whether to hook into child_process.fork() which is required for clustered programs. Default: true
• notify – Whether to display desktop notifications. Default: true
• timestamp – The timestamp format to use for logging restarts. Default: "HH:MM:ss"
• clear – Whether to clear the screen upon restarts. Default: false
• extensions – Modules to load based bad on extension of the main script. Default: { coffee: "coffee-script", ls: "LiveScript" }