Feature/poll active file for change

[deicon]

Allow automatic refresh from currently rendered and displayed local file.

New Flags

--watch, -f Enable File Watching (Defaults false) --interval, -i Interval in seconds to poll for file updates

This would fix #426 and is related to #416

[gibbz00]

Works like a charm 😍 what's the status on merging this into master?

[deicon]

I tried to fix a few bugs and added some enhancements to various charm projects. Unfortunately the response time once a PR is opened is not the best. So as there is no reaction on this PR since Dec 22, I would argue, it will not be merged any time soon

[marcelarie]

👀

[Wheest]

This is a feature that would be useful to me.

In the meantime, I have achieved a similar (though less effective) solution using the inotify-tools package

MYFILE=log_file.txt
while inotifywait -e modify $MYFILE; do
    clear
    cat $MYFILE | glow
done

[deicon]

Sure. Or using entr. I keep on using my patched version of glow though :)

ls *.md | entr glow yourfile.md

[VanuPhantom]

^ bumping this PR

The fact that this feature has been ready since December last year and still hasn't been added is a shame as it's a wonderful concept!

[deicon]

^ bumping this PR

The fact that this feature has been ready since December last year and still hasn't been added is a shame as it's a wonderful concept!

I almost forgot about this open PR. I went from being motivated to work on issues here, to Beeing realistic and did not expect it to be merged soon. Turns out i was right 😀 I believe I also asked the maintainers if there is anything missing for this to be considered. It might not be on their agenda. But even then I would expect the PR to be handled somehow. Rejecting at least.

[timskovjacobsen]

This works nicely for me.

I uninstalled the upstream glow and will be using your version for the time being. It's vital to have live rendering while writing a markdown document.

I noticed that the file watcher only works in TUI mode, i.e. when invoked with glow and then navigating to the file via the TUI.

I tried to do this at first glow --watch --interval 1 --pager. When it did not reload on changes, I noticed that glow --help mentioned it only works in TUI mode.

[deicon]

This may be a bug indeed. Not sure if am willing to spend more time on this to make it not only work in tui mode.

[znd4]

Sure. Or using entr. I keep on using my patched version of glow though :)

ls *.md | entr glow yourfile.md

Adding skim and some extra entr functionality for fuzzy-finding and a pretty experience:

sk | entr -c glow  /_

[deicon]

@meowgorithm Is there still need for this, or should I close it ?

[meowgorithm]

Thanks for flagging this, @deicon. We'll take a look at this and let you know of week.

[muesli]

I think a polling solution should only be a fallback for monitoring files. Ideally we use one of the platform's native ways to monitor filesystem events: kqueue, inotify, and so on. There's an fsnotify package that abstracts this functionality for each platform, but it doesn't have a polling fallback yet. Maybe this would be a good contribution there?

There are also additional problems that we uncovered while experimenting with filesystem monitoring:

1. Partial writes: we will need to figure out a way to detect when a file has been fully updated, not when writing to it starts. Otherwise you render incomplete content.
2. Some editors & tools will not actually overwrite the contents of a file, but write to a temporary file first, then move it in place. In such situations the original file typically briefly disappears, along with all the monitoring you set up.