Enhancement: Report changed path about entr

[RobertLarsen]

That is what I want, but I do not know which file is touched and so why this loop is triggered (well, I do, but only after a lot of debugging). I run a build and test chain and it does a gazillion things. If entr would somehow tell what triggered the command (through a log file or environment variable or whatever) debugging this would have been immensely easier.

[kopsha]

Ok, now I understand what enhancement you are requesting, it makes sense. Thanks.

[kopsha]

From my understandingentr does not change paths... unless I'm missing something.

[RobertLarsen]

No, but it monitors for changes...and the program that entr executes when it detects a change may change something which entr detects and executes the program, which may change something, which entr detects, which....and so on.

[kopsha]

I understand the endless loop that gets created, and I think that the problem you have is outside the scope of the tool.
I do not know your full context, but I would try a different setup that does not trigger this loop. Maybe you are doing too many things with a single command and it may be worth to break it down.

[eradman]

@RobertLarsen you can set EV_TRACE to see the events as they are processed

ag -l | EV_TRACE=1 entr make

This was meant as a means of debugging issues with entr itself, but I think it will work for your case. The "leading edge" (first file to trigger an event) is accessible on the command line as well by printing the special filename /_

ag -l | entr echo /_

Another way to get at this data (not documented) is that $0 is set to the leading edge when using the -s flag

ag -l | entr -s 'echo $0'