Flux

Universal Live-Reload Manager

Flux is a cross-platform, language-agnostic CLI tool that watches your code and automatically restarts any shell command when files change. It ships with zero-config defaults, optional TOML/YAML configuration, and a Rich-powered TUI for live logs and timing.

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🚀 Features

• Universal watcher: wrap any command (servers, test runners, compilers, file sync, etc.)
• Zero-config: sensible defaults (watch ./, ignore .git/, venv/, node_modules/, all extensions, 200 ms debounce)
• Config file support: hotreload.toml or hotreload.yaml for persistent settings
• Flexible CLI flags: override paths, ignore patterns, extensions, debounce interval, and command
• Debounced restarts: coalesce rapid file changes into a single restart
• Cross-platform: Linux (inotify), macOS (FSEvents), Windows (ReadDirectoryChangesW)
• Rich TUI: color-coded stdout vs stderr, process status indicator, and runtime timer

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💾 Installation

PyPI link: https://pypi.org/project/flux-reload/

From PyPI:

pip install flux-reload

From source (editable mode):

git clone https://github.com/yourusername/flux.git
cd flux
pip install -e .

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⚡ Quick Start

Wrap your existing command:

flux -- python server.py --port 8080

Flux will watch the current directory (.), ignore common folders, and restart your process whenever any file changes, showing logs and restart timings in its built-in TUI.

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📖 CLI Usage

Usage: flux [OPTIONS] -- <command>...

Options:
  -w, --watch PATH      Paths to watch (repeatable)
  -i, --ignore PATH     Paths to ignore (repeatable)
      --exts TEXT       Comma-separated extensions (e.g. py,html)
      --debounce INT    Debounce interval in milliseconds (default: 200)
  -c, --config PATH     Path to hotreload.toml or .yaml
  --help                Show this message and exit

Examples

# Watch src/ and templates/, ignore tests/
flux -w src -w templates -i tests -- python app.py

# Only trigger on .py and .html changes
flux --exts py,html -- python app.py

# Increase debounce to 500 ms
flux --debounce 500 -- python app.py

# Using a config file
flux -c hotreload.toml

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⚙️ Configuration File

Drop a hotreload.toml or hotreload.yaml in your project root:

# hotreload.toml
watch       = ["src/", "templates/"]
ignore      = ["tests/", "venv/"]
exts        = ["py", "html"]
debounce_ms = 300
cmd         = ["python", "app.py", "--port", "8080"]

# hotreload.yaml
watch:
  - src/
  - templates/
ignore:
  - tests/
  - venv/
exts:
  - py
  - html
debounce_ms: 300
cmd:
  - python
  - app.py
  - --port
  - "8080"

Then simply:

flux -c hotreload.toml

Flux will pick up all your settings and run your command with automatic reloads.

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🏗 Architecture Overview

Flux is built as an async event-driven pipeline:

1. Watcher
   Uses watchdog to observe filesystem changes and pushes events into an asyncio.Queue.
2. Debouncer
   Coalesces rapid bursts of events into a single ReloadSignal.
3. Process Manager
   Gracefully kills & restarts your wrapped command via asyncio.create_subprocess_exec.
4. Renderer
   Renders a Rich TUI: color-coded logs, ▶️/⏸ status icon, and restart timers.

Each stage is decoupled by queues, adheres to SOLID principles, and is easy to unit-test or extend.

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🤝 Contributing

1. Fork the repo
2. Create a feature branch:

   git checkout -b feat/my-feature

3. Commit your changes & add tests
4. Open a Pull Request

Please follow the existing code style, write tests for new features, and ensure the TUI remains responsive.