Service File Change Monitoring#

A service can be automatically restarted when files are modified in watched directories.

To enable this feature, add a watch entry to the service definition:

- id: 0
  name: sample_service
  command: echo world
  watch: /app/config.yml

Files or directories can also be watched using filters to include or exclude specific patterns (see [Files and Paths filtering]):

- id: 1
  name: another_service
  command: echo another world
  watch:
    include: [ "*.{c,h}" ]
    exclude: [ "*.o" ]
    paths: [ ".", "/app/config.yml" ]
    max_depth: 1

The following restrictions apply:

• Watching rules are created when the service starts. If a file or directory listed in paths does not exist at that time, it will not be monitored.
• Subdirectories created after service has started will not be monitored.

Files and Paths Filtering#

Files and paths filtering is based on globbing rules, as implemented by globset.

Important: on Linux globbing is applied in two stages:

1. On the path when directories are initially registered for watching.
2. On the file-name when a change is detected.

The include and exclude rules are applied at both stages.

Some built-in exclusions are always enabled:

[ ".?*", "**/{build,target}*", "*.{o,pyo,pyc}" ]

These patterns exclude hidden files, directories prefixed with build or target, and common compiler object files (C and Python).

Supported Globbin#

• ? -- matches any single character
• * -- matches zero or more characters (excluding directory separators /)
• ** -- recursively matches directories
• {a.b} -- match any of the listed patterns
• [ab] -- matches any of the given characters (use [!ab] to match any character except a and b)