ct-watch-build¶

Continuous rebuild helper that watches sources with inotify¶

Author:: drgeoffathome@gmail.com
Date:: 2025-11-26
Version:: 10.0.6
Manual section:: 1
Manual group:: developers

SYNOPSIS¶

ct-watch-build [CT-CAKE OPTIONS]

DESCRIPTION¶

ct-watch-build wraps ct-cake in a simple inotify-powered loop so that every save automatically triggers a rebuild. Each iteration:

Runs inotifywait -e modify,close_write,move,delete $(ct-cake --file-list), using command substitution to regenerate the watch list on the fly before blocking for changes.
Executes ct-cake "$@" the moment inotifywait reports a change, relying on ct-cake’s default automatic target detection.

The tool never touches your generated build files and stops only when you press Ctrl+C. All arguments passed to ct-watch-build are forwarded to the ct-cake command so you can continue to specify variants, cache settings, output directories, magic modes, etc.

REQUIREMENTS¶

inotifywait from the inotify-tools package must be installed and available on PATH (Linux only).
ct-cake must be configured correctly for the project you are watching.

OPTIONS¶

No bespoke options are defined. Use the normal ct-cake flags such as:

--variant VARIANT Build with the given variant (release, debug, …).

--magic {direct,cpp} Select the magic include processing mode.

--cas-objdir PATH / --bindir PATH Override output directories.

See ct-cake (1) for the full CLI reference.

EXAMPLES¶

Watch and rebuild continuously using the default variant:

ct-watch-build

Watch while building with release flags and a custom cas-objdir:

ct-watch-build --variant=release --cas-objdir=/tmp/ct-obj