Go Pulse

A simple, dependency-free tool that automatically rebuilds and runs your Go program when files are changed.

Features

• Monitors your Go project files for changes
• Automatically rebuilds and reruns your program when changes are detected
• Configurable via simple JSON file
• No external dependencies - uses the Go standard library only

Installation

go get -tool github.com/cc-jj/pulse@latest

Usage

Run it from any Go project directory

# initialize pulse with a default config in the current working directory
go tool pulse -init

# print the verison
go tool pulse -v

# run specifying the config path
go tool pulse -c=/path/to/pulse.json

# run using the default config path (./pulse.json)
go tool pulse

Configuration

The tool can be customized via a json file. Here's an example:

{
  "main_file": "main.go",
  "binary_name": "app",
  "watch_dir": ".",
  "watch_exts": [".go", ".mod", ".sum"],
  "watch_interval": "1s",
  "max_watchers": 100
}

Configuration Options

Option	Description	Default
main_file	The main Go file to build and run	"main.go"
binary_name	The name of the compiled binary	"app"
watch_dir	The directory to watch for changes	"."
watch_exts	File extensions to watch for changes	[".go", ".mod", ".sum"]
watch_interval	How often to check for file changes (in Go duration format)	"1s"
max_watchers	Prevent watching more than this many files	100

Note that all paths (main_file, binary_name, and watch_dir) are relative to the current working directory.

The watch_interval accepts standard Go duration strings like "500ms", "1s", "2.5s", "1m", etc. The minimum allowed interval is 500ms and the maximum is 1 hour.

The minimum allowed max_watchers is 1. The maximum is 500.

How It Works

1. The tool recursively watches the specified directory for file changes
2. When a file with a matching extension is modified, added, or deleted
3. The tool stops any running process from the previous build
4. It rebuilds your Go program
5. It runs the newly built binary

License

MIT