Sidekick

Sidekick is a command line tool to automatically trigger actions on certain events, as defined per project, in a local .sidekick file in your project folder:


watch('**/*.rb') { restart_passenger; rake docs }

auto_compile 'assets/*.sass', 'public/:name.css'

every(10) { notify sh 'fortune' }

Sample use cases

Restart server when code is changed
Auto-compile Sass or CoffeeScript templates (and many other languages)
Periodically run tasks
Continuous testing, notifications, hooks, you name it

Features

Simple and powerful DSL
Easy to extend
Compiles many formats, thanks to Tilt.
Powered by EventMachine
Short and sweet codebase – core < 100 loc

You can read the annotated source code.

Basic usage

Install with gem install sidekick and invoke the sidekick command in your project folder. If you do not have a .sidekick file, you will be offered a template with plenty of examples.

View source:

Defining new triggers

Have a look at the existing triggers, and you will get the idea. Basically, you define new triggers by calling Sidekick::Triggers.register(:trigger_name) { .. }, and hooking into EventMachine the same way as in EM.run { .. } from there.

You can keep your extensions in the .sidekick file itself, or package them in gems, or (better) ask me to merge them into the main repository.

Sidekick

Sample use cases

Features

Basic usage

Defining new triggers

Copyright