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