docfx watch

[vicancy]

[Gain 42 upvotes from feathub feature request dashboard.]

Monitor web page request, build the page with its dependencies.

• [ ] Local static file server
• [ ] In memory single/multiple file build
• [ ] Defer tocmap, xrefmap, contributors build asynchronously
• [ ] Rebuild on file change using polling file system watcher
• [ ] In memory caching and performance tuning

[cnmade]

+1 need this feature,

[bryancostanich]

As an organization looking at docfx to power our developer site, I have to say; from a productivity perspective, this is the first issue we've run into that's a major deal.

We currently use github pages (jekyll + ruby), and when you run it locally, changes are automatically picked up and rendered. Without that feature, it's impossible to easily view our changes in situ; and have to rely on our markdown editor's render view.

That coupled with the fact that I can't actually terminate the server from mac terminal, makes it very difficult to work on conceptual documentation in docfx.

Autoupdates would improve the situation massively.

[superyyrrzz]

@bryancostanich According to our roadmap, v2 will not support watch, and v3 will. Does DocFX preview plugin help?

[bryancostanich]

I can't actually get that plugin to work. It throws server errors. Request failed with status code 405.

I'll work on it with some folks to see if we can fix and evaluate.

[bryancostanich]

Watch being a v3 feature makes complete sense to me, especially given how far along it is. By the way, i think your roadmap is out of date. It mentions december stuff as future. curious as to where you're currently at on v3? Can you provide an update on that issue, please?

[yufeih]

@bryancostanich , I've updated the v3 roadmap here, we are currently busy working on docs integration and docs migration.

[BennyKok]

A quick alternative I tried, I am able to use npm-watch to simulate a 'hot-reload' by retriggering docfx build --serve when the file changes. Incase this will be useful for someone.