Solving Conditional Requirement

entr cannot handle conditionals natively, but you can just use a shell script.

I did this quick test of Go.

#!/usr/bin/env bash

echo "Building in ${PWD}"

go build

if [ $? -ne 0 ]; then
  echo "Build failed ❌"
  exit 1
else
  echo "Build succeeded ✅"
  exit 0
fi

You can use it like this, go_build being the script above:

ls *.go | entr -cp go_build

For entr CLI flags used:

-c Clear the screen before invoking the utility specified on the command line. Specify twice to erase the scrollback buffer.

-p Postpone the first execution of the utility until a file is modified.

Resources and References

• manpages.org: entr