Add a key-press to re-run the specs under --watch

[ELLIOTTCABLE]

I love --watch. It's great. But there's a few situations where I need to re-run the tests, and it doesn't catch them (i.e. changing an implementation file, as opposed to a test-file, see #870); it'd be nice if hitting the spacebar with the Terminal focused (or something along those lines) forced a re-run of the tests.

Along the same lines, it might be nice to be able to configure a minimum timeout to re-run them anyway, so that the window is always up-to-date, even if it misses a change. (Obviously more tenable for small projects than big ones … but isn't that already the case with --watch?)

[tj]

yeah a timeout sounds reasonable to me!

[kevindente]

+1 for this.

[al-the-x]

How hard would adding a system event listener be? Maybe SIGINT to the process to rerun, twice to quit (a la the node REPL)...?

[ELLIOTTCABLE]

(@al-the-x why SIGINT? There's plenty of other signals that don't stomp on a user's ⌃C expectations. man signal. Personally, I think SIGINFO, ⌃T, is appropriate)

[al-the-x]

I agree that a different signal would be more appropriate: SIGINFO, SIGIO, etc. I don't know to many folks that know how to send anything other than SIGINT via the keyboard... I usually wow them with ^D and ^Z, and I teach the stuff to professionals.

Maybe ^C shows some info on which signals are supported and a hint to the control character... Wouldn't recommend trying to parse their stty -a or anything, but a reminder might help.

[ELLIOTTCABLE]

@al-the-x to most users, ⌃C isn't ‘send a signal to the program’, it's ‘get me out of this program to the place where I type other programs' names.’ And that's assuming they know that those two things are different. Hence my original suggestion of swallowing the space-bar or something; that's a more intuitive interface for the vast majority of users, than attempting to explain UNIX signals to them (or worse, stomping on possibly pre-existing expectations of being returned to the terminal, to do so)

[TimothyGu]

I have to agree with @ELLIOTTCABLE here. SIGINT means "interrupt," i.e. "mocha, f*ing kill yourself!"

SIGUSR1 might be fit for this job, but it's impossible to type that on a keyboard.

SIGINFO means:

A synonym for SIGPWR

(man 7 signal)

Which is:

Power failure (System V)

(man 7 signal)

nodemon's approach might be best, i.e. typing rs\n.

[boneskull]

IMO "watch" should be killed. There are other tools which do this sort of thing much better.

[dasilvacontin]

+1 to kill watch. I don't see the point of replicating the functionality of a watcher inside the project, when any watcher tool will do the job.