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eradman
entr
C2021–2026
eradman / entr

entr

Run arbitrary commands when files change

14Distinct people
14Mentions
0Explicit recommenders
5.7KGitHub stars
REPOSITORY AT A GLANCE

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What it is

Run arbitrary commands when files change

GitHub

Where it is used

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What people are saying

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This week on Hacker News

Nov 7–Nov 14 UTC · Direct repository links and separately labeled related project stories. Indexed through 11/14/2026, 3:56:07 PM UTC.

No direct repository links were found in the indexed HN discussions over the past seven days. Older discussions are available below.

Mentions over time

HN mentions by year14 dated mentions

Observed mentions: 2021-12-06 13:46:52 UTC to 2026-04-01 20:59:01 UTC.

01232021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 1 submissions, 1 comments20212022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 0 submissions, 3 comments20232024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 3 mentions; 1 submissions, 2 comments2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 2 mentions; 1 submissions, 1 comments2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC to 2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC (exclusive): 1 mentions; 0 submissions, 1 comments. Incomplete calendar period.2026*

* An incomplete calendar period is marked with an outlined bar. Its count is not directly comparable with a full period.

Counts come from the repository’s dated source evidence. Index cutoff: 2026-11-02 08:16:59 UTC.

View mention counts and date ranges
UTC ranges include their start and exclude their end. Select a period to filter the source evidence.
PeriodStart (UTC)End (exclusive, UTC)MentionsSubmissionsComments
20212021-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC211
20222022-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20232023-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC303
20242024-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC312
20252025-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC211
2026 (partial)2026-01-01 00:00:00 UTC2027-01-01 00:00:00 UTC101

What Hacker News says

14 sources
https://github.com/atuinsh/atuin for fuzzy shell history (ctrl+r) https://github.com/sharkdp/bat (nice coloured cat replacement) https://github.com/abiosoft/colima (so I don't need docker desktop) https://github.com/duckdb/duckdb (performant database that lets you directly query JSON, parquet, csv files with SQL queries and convert one to the other. https://github.com/eradman/entr (rerun commands automatically when provided files change) (useful for rerunning test commands automatically once you save the file you're editing. https://github.com/martinvonz/jj and https://github.com/idursun/jjui (Jujutsu VCS, been using it for three months and I really enjoy it) https://github.com/jesseduffield/lazydocker (managing containers, images, volumes easily) https://github.com/jesseduffield/lazygit (best tui for git and outside niche git commands, t
Read the rest
he fastest way to use git.) https://github.com/jdx/mise (fast asdf, direnv, and task runner replacement) (install pretty much version of tool, language, env vars in a per directory level. (Or global if you want)) https://github.com/ajeetdsouza/zoxide (intelligent cd to move between directories incredibly quickly)
In Ask HN: What dev tools do you rely on that nobody talks about?
https://github.com/eradman/entr is Language files blank comment code ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- C 4 154 163 880 Bourne Shell 2 74 28 536 C/C++ Header 4 21 66 70 Markdown 1 21 0 37 YAML 1 0 0 14 ------------------------------------------------------------------------------- SUM: 12 270 257 1537 -------------------------------------------------------
Read the rest
------------------------ including a well-designed CLI. entr supports BSD, Mac OS, and Linux (even WSL). So that's several platforms in <2k lines of code. By using MATHEMATICS and EXTRAPOLATION we find that non-WSL Windows file-watching must take four million minus two thousand equals calculate calculate 3998000 lines of code. Ahem. Though to be fair, cargo watch probably does more than just file-watching. (Should it? Is it worth the complexity? I guess that depends on where you land on the worse-is-better discussion.)
In Rewriting Rust
I use something very similar on https://lunar.fyi and https://lowtechguys.com but I wouldn’t call this “simple” anymore. They use Jinja templating, I prefer Slim (https://github.com/slim-template/slim#syntax-example) which has a more Pythonic syntax (there is plim [0] in Python for that) I use Tailwind as well for terse styling and fast experimentation (allows me to write a darkMode-aware and responsive 100 line CSS in a single line with about 10 classes) For interaction I can write CoffeeScript directly in the page [1] and have it compiled by plim. I run a Caddy static server [2] and use Syncthing [3] to have every file save deployed instantly to my Hetzner server. I use entr [4] and livereloadx [5] to rebuild the pages and do hot reload on file save. All the commands are managed in a simple Makefile [6] ——— You can already see how the f
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ootnotes take up a large chunk of this comment, this is not my idea of simple. Sure, the end result is readable static HTML and I never have to fight obscure React errors, but it’s a high effort setup for starters. Simple for me would be: write markdown files for pages, a simple CSS for general styling (should be optional), click to deploy on my domain. Images should automatically be resized to multiple sizes and optimized, videos re-encoded for smaller filesize etc. I have mostly implemented that for myself (https://notes.alinpanaitiu.com/How%20I%20write%20this%20blog...) but it feels fragile. I’d rather pay for a professional solution. [0] https://plim.readthedocs.io/en/latest/ [1] https://github.com/FuzzyIdeas/lowtechguys/blob/main/src/rcmd... [2] https://caddyserver.com/docs/command-line#caddy-file-server [3] https://syncthing.net [4] https://github.com/eradman/entr [5] https://nitoyon.github.io/livereloadx/ [6] https://github.com/FuzzyIdeas/lowtechguys/blob/main/Makefile
In How to build a website without frameworks and tons of libraries
I do something similar using entr [0][1]. I use it instead of `watch` because I would rather not re-run things if no relevant files have changed. For example, I run: fd -e j2 -e py | entr -c python3 build.py To rebuild a static site every time the build script[2] (py) or a Jinja2 template (j2) changes. [0]: https://github.com/eradman/entr [1]: https://jvns.ca/blog/2020/06/28/entr/ [2]: https://gist.github.com/polyrand/3bed83897658806bd490e1d44df...
In Show HN: I built a tool to get instant test results
You could launch the container itself with sleep. (docker run --entrypoint /bin/sh [image] sleep inf) Then start the dev watch thing with 'docker exec', and when you don't need it anymore you can kill it. (Eg. via htop) With uwsgi you can control which file to watch. I usually just set it to watch the index.py so when I want to restart it, I just switch to that and save the file. Similarly you could do this with "entr" https://github.com/eradman/entr
In Optimizing Docker image size and why it matters

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