Live Reload

[tyeeman]

This would be nice to have when a md file or a template file changes.

[DanielRuf]

Wouldn't it make more sense to just use one of the existing solutions and let it run the luasmith command again, when some file modification happens?

https://github.com/eradman/entr
https://github.com/codeskyblue/fswatch
https://github.com/emcrisostomo/fswatch
https://github.com/watchexec/watchexec
https://github.com/cespare/reflex

Personally I would not need a live-reload feature embedded into luasmith, especially since this may require native code which has to be compiled for each platform (thus is less portable).

And similar to the Unix philosophy, to me luasmith is just the compiler / generator and only has one job. If I wanted the live-reload feature, I would use some inotify solution on my Linux-based laptops and let it trigger the luasmith command.

I think this proposal would contradict the idea of luasmith, to be as minimal as possible:

https://log.schemescape.com/posts/static-site-generators/smallest-static-site-generator.html#:~:text=Overall%2C%20I%27d%20describe%20the%20architecture%20as%20%22minimalist%20Metalsmith%20in%20Lua%2C%20with%20zero%20runtime%20dependencies%22.

Overall, I'd describe the architecture as "minimalist Metalsmith in Lua, with zero runtime dependencies".

[jaredkrinke]

For context, my previous SSG (md2blog) included a web server with live reload, enabling ~50ms updates. I'm pretty sure @tyeeman used md2blog (on Windows?), so probably looking for "feature parity" :)

The main advantage I see to including this in the SSG is that it can be really, really fast (bypassing even the file system, in the case of md2blog). The main disadvantage is, obviously, the huge increase in complexity (embedding a web server and file-watcher).

Regardless, it would be good to at least identify an easy-to-use, existing solution for each relevant platform (and put that info in the docs).

I actually made such a solution in the past, but, embarrassingly, I don't recall if I finished or released it. It was also, sadly, a huge download, for such a simple-sounding tool (30+ MB). Anyway, I'll see if I can dig up and/or revive that so that at least there is something I know that works well. Edit: looks like the Deno-based tool I made for watching and serving files never got cleaned up or released.

[jaredkrinke]

This sounds promising: https://github.com/mufeedvh/binserve

Edit: I don't have any immediate plans to do so, but if I was going to try and incorporate this into luasmith, I would probably start with libhttp and dmon.

[tyeeman]

Found a good one here but it's not working

https://github.com/absmach/watchdoc

I put an issue in.