Working with many projects

One daemon manages every project you bring up. You can run watchd up in as many projects as you like, see all of them together, and control any of them from any directory.

$ watchd ls
PROJECT  RUNNING  LOADED  CONFIG
blog     1/1      2h10m   ~/work/blog/watchd.lua
shop     2/3      14m03s  ~/work/shop/watchd.lua

$ watchd ps -a
PROJECT  APP     STATE              PID    UPTIME  RESTARTS
blog     site    running            40211  2h10m   0
shop     api     running (healthy)  41233  14m03s  0
shop     web     running            41260  14m02s  0
shop     worker  stopped            -      -       0

How watchd decides which project you mean

You run…	It acts on…
watchd stop api inside a project	The project whose watchd.lua is in this directory or a parent, the same way git finds its repository
watchd stop -p shop api	The loaded project named shop, from anywhere
watchd stop shop/api blog/site	Apps in several projects at once, from anywhere
watchd stop api elsewhere	The only loaded project, if exactly one is loaded

If watchd can't tell which project you mean, it doesn't guess. It lists the loaded projects and asks you to pick:

$ watchd stop worker
error: several projects are loaded (blog, shop); choose one with -p NAME, use PROJECT/APP, or run from a project directory

Common tasks

watchd ls                       # every loaded project
watchd ps -a                    # every app of every project
watchd ps shop                  # the apps of one project
watchd restart shop/api         # restart one app, from anywhere
watchd logs -f blog/site        # follow one app of another project
watchd logs -p shop             # all logs of a project
watchd stop -p shop             # stop every app of a project (it stays loaded)
watchd down blog                # stop and unload one project
watchd down blog shop           # several at once
watchd down --all               # every project
watchd off                      # every project, and the daemon itself

ps with no arguments shows the current directory's project if it's loaded, and every project otherwise.

Project names

Every loaded project needs a unique name, because names are how you address projects from anywhere.

• The name comes from name = "..." in the config, or the config folder's name if that's missing (cleaned up: My App (old) becomes my-app-old).
• Names may contain letters, digits, ., _ and -. They can't contain /, which separates project and app in PROJECT/APP.
• If two configs use the same name, the second watchd up fails with a message saying which config already has it. Rename one of them, or run watchd down NAME first.

up, reload and down

Command	What happens
watchd up (not loaded yet)	Reads the config, loads the project, starts its apps.
watchd up (already loaded)	Starts any apps that aren't running. It does not re-read the config.
watchd reload	Re-reads the config and restarts the project with it. Apps that were running come back, and new apps with autostart = true start. If the config has errors, nothing changes.
watchd stop	Stops apps; the project stays loaded and visible in ps.
watchd down	Stops every app and unloads the project.