Jitter

Simple continuous compilation for CoffeeScript, from the author of CoffeeScript: Accelerated JavaScript Development.

Jitter watches for new files and changes to files in the CoffeeScript source directory you specify, and compiles new JavaScript files as needed. No flags, no worries, just the sweet CoffeeScript compilation you need when you need it.

Bonus! Jitter gives you Growl notifications when compilation fails! See below for details.

Extra bonus! Jitter lets you automatically compile and run a second set of code after each successful compilation. That means that console-based tests are a breeze.

Extra, extra bonus! Jitter only replaces JS files when necessary (that is, when your CoffeeScript and JavaScript are out of sync). So no more meaningless timestamp changes!

Installing

You'll need to install Node.js and npm, the Node Package Manager. If you don't already have CoffeeScript installed (check with require('coffee-script') from Node), run

npm install -g coffee-script

(The -g flag tells npm that you want to do a global install, rather than just making the library available to a particular project.) And adding Jitter is just as easy:

npm install -g jitter

Make sure that the bin directory that coffee and jitter are installed to is on your PATH.

From source

To build and install Jitter from source:

git clone git://github.com/TrevorBurnham/Jitter.git
cd Jitter
npm install -g

Usage

Let's say you have a bunch of *.coffee files in the coffee directory, and want to compile them to the js directory. Then run:

jitter coffee js

Jitter runs in the background until you terminate it (Ctrl+C), watching for new changes.

Or let's say you want to take *.coffee files from the src directory and compile them to the current directory. Then run

jitter src .

To automatically run your tests after each change, specify a test directory:

jitter coffee js test

To generate source maps alongside the JavaScript files (Coffee will add the directives automatically):

jitter coffee js -m

To compile the JavaScript without the top-level function safety wrapper:

jitter coffee js -b

As an example, this would watch the coffee folder, compile into the js folder, generate sourcemaps, and run the tests:

jitter coffee js test -m

If you don't want to hear a beep sound on errors, pass '-s' as an option:

jitter coffee js -s

Tests will be compiled to js in place, then executed with node. Tests are automatically re-executed when changed.

Growl notifications

Jitter will display a growl notification whenever compilation fails, provided that you have growlnotify installed and on your PATH. This allows you to run Jitter silently in the background, not worrying about it until you get a syntax error.

Growl notifications are also shown if an error is encountered while running a test, including uncaught AssertionErrors.

Credits

Originally written by Trevor Burnham. Updated to CoffeeScript 0.9 by cj. Growl notification code pulled from work by Andrey Tarantsov. Post-compile hook code added by Scott Wadden (hiddenbek). Various patches by Nao izuka (iizukanao). Source maps support by Aria Minaei (AriaMinaei).

Copyright

Copyright (c) 2011 Trevor Burnham http://trevorburnham.com

Based on command.coffee by Jeremy Ashkenas http://jashkenas.github.com/coffee-script/documentation/docs/command.html

MIT licensed:

Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:

The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.

THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.