Getting Started

Project Setup

To use ExRerun with your projects, edit your mix.exs file and add it as a dependency.

defp deps do
  [{:ex_rerun, "~> 0.3", only: :dev}]
end

What is ExRerun

ExRerun is a package that is monitors your Elixir, and other source files, while you are develop your application and then reruns a set of mix tasks whenever a source file is added, deleted, or changed.

Configuration

It is possible to configure ex_rerun using the following parameters:

Note: the example below shows the default values.

config :ex_rerun,
  scan_interval: 4000,
  silent: false,
  file_types: [".ex", ".exs", ".eex", ".json"],
  paths: ["lib", "priv"],
  ignore_pattern: nil,
  tasks: [:elixir]

where:

• scan_interval specifies the number of ms to wait between rerun checks,
• silent toggles whether to print the output of the tasks registered, every time ex_rerun runs,
• file_types lists which file types that will trigger a rerun when changed,
• paths lists which folders to monitor,
• ignore_pattern specifies a regular expression, e.g. ~r{\.?#(.)}, matching files that should to be ignored even if they have a file type included in file_types, and

• tasks enumerates the mix tasks to run each time a code modification occurs, possible built-in values are: :elixir, :test, :escript, where

  • :elixir recompiles Elixir source code (same as Mix.Tasks.Compile.Elixir),
  • :test reruns any mix tests in the project (same as Mix.Tasks.Test), and
  • escript rebuilds a escript file (same as Mix.Tasks.Escript.Build).

Furthermore, tasks can also include custom mix tasks. For example, the hex package elm_compile defines the Mix.Tasks.Compile.Elm task which allows mix to also compile Elm files in a mix project. An example project config using ex_rerun and elm_compile might look like so:

config :ex_rerun,
  file_types: [".elm", ".ex", ".exs", ".eex", ".json"],
  paths: ["lib", "priv", "web"],
  ignore_pattern: ~r{\.?#(.)},
  tasks: [:elixir, Mix.Tasks.Compile.Elm]

Another example of a custom mix task could be to generate API documentation for a project based on a set of RAML files.