Ever forgot to restart the development web server when you change things like Gemfile or config/environments/development.rb? You're not alone. There are a lot of cases to keep in mind:

• You upgrade and/or remove/add gems to Gemfile.
• You change environment values (e.g. config/environments/development.rb).
• You change initializer values.
• You add/remove directories to/from app.
• You add/remove files to/from config/locales.
• You change configuration files living at config/*.yml .

With this gem you don't have to think about it. Every time you change files that require a restart, an exception will be raised and you'll know what you have to do.

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem "check_files", group: :development

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install check_files

You don't have to configure anything but there are some configurable values if you want. The following values are the defaults:

# The list of files/directories that must be checked.
# Patterns ended with /* will just check the entries list (not the content).
config.check_files.paths = [
  "Gemfile.lock",
  "config/initializers/**/*.rb",
  "config/{application,boot,config,environment}.rb",
  "config/*.yml",
  "config/environments/**/*.rb",
  "app/*",
  "config/locales/**/*"
]

# The notifier that will be used. By default it raises an exception on Rails < 5 or restarts the web server (Rails 5+).
# You can use CheckFiles::Notifiers::Exception, CheckFiles::Notifiers::Logging or CheckFiles::Notifiers::Restart (Rails 5+).
config.check_files.notifier = CheckFiles::Notifiers::Exception

To overwrite any of these values, just create the initializer config/initializers/check_files.rb like the following:

Rails.configuration.check_files.notifier = CheckFiles::Notifiers::Logging

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake test to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/fnando/check_files. This project is intended to be a safe, welcoming space for collaboration, and contributors are expected to adhere to the Contributor Covenant code of conduct.

The gem is available as open source under the terms of the MIT License.