Forever documentation about .foreverignore

[ilanbiala]

I got this error:

error: Could not read .foreverignore file.
error: ENOENT, open '/var/www/ilanbiala.com/public_html/.foreverignore'

but I can't find docs about .foreverignore. What goes in there?

[indexzero]

This is actually two bugs:

1. Need documentation for this. The .foreverignore file is a file (formatted like a .gitignore file) which tells forever what things to ignore when using the forever --watch option.
2. There is a bug in forever-monitor because when .foreverignore doesn't exist it shouldn't error.

[manjuadzmedia]

+1, am also looking for documenation about .foreverignore, as what to put in it and where to put that file.

[ilanbiala]

@indexzero any progress on this?

[liyanchang]

Based on old commits like b5ce548, you can see that a reasonable .foreverignore file looks like:

node_modules
ignore*

However, it does look like .foreverignore is no longer part of forever since 2012 as a major refactor at b46c4c0 removed it.

[indexzero]

.foreverignore is still fully supported, it's just in the forever-monitor module which forever depends on.

[ilanbiala]

Any resolution here?

[ch3njust1n]

I am also getting this issue. I'm also curious if there has been any progress on this issue!

[NawarA]

I got it working. Add .foreverignore in the directory you're watching, then add

.log

to the file, or whatever file pattern you'd like to ignore. Thats it. I'm using this now

[ilanbiala]

@indexzero any documentation added for this?

[mikeatlas]

@ilanbiala no documentation yet, author is requesting/welcoming a PR for documentation of the feature per #663 😒

[ilanbiala]

Not really sure why...if it's so simple then someone who maintains the package really should have written the initial docs.

[indexzero]

@ilanbiala it is equally as simple for a new contributor to write up this documentation. Open source is by definition a collaborative effort. Simply expressing negative sentiments and not contributing will not motivate a maintainer to do work. The dark side does not win here.

PRs are still very welcome here.

[mikeatlas]

It's a complicated documentation task, apparently @ilanbiala - it appears there are nuances with the overlapping behaviors of the --watch, --watchIgnore, and --watchDirectory CLI switch functionalities that are (subtly) coupled more tightly than they could be along with the behavior of the .foreverignore file. What takes precedent?

I presume this is why nobody has offered to submit a PR for documentation and the original author isn't inclined to put effort into it either. It requires more than just editing the README.md to correctly document the behavior; one would have to read the source code for all these switches and understand the true behavior of all the potential variants (other tickets have demonstrated there's only scant test coverage for this feature as well) lacking... for years.... I suppose if I were the original author myself, I'd be disinclined to want to fix, maintain, and properly document this complicated aspect/feature as well and request PRs (for years) on this area.

It might worthwhile to seek out additional willing repo maintainers, @indexzero, to help?

Also, there is precedent for the author accepting documentation PRs, it's just that most people expect that core functionality is documented when added or changed by the original author or the feature PR contributor; and it's not the case here it seems that many features have been contributed and accepted over the years; yet not all of it got README love.

[ftabaro]

updates on this? looks like the --watch flag brakes forever when running inside the latest WebStorm IDE (2016.2). Anyone into this?

Here is my post on the WS tech support page.

[melroy89]

Yea it's still not solved actually..

error: Could not read .foreverignore file.
error: ENOENT: no such file or directory, open '/.foreverignore'
error: restarting script because unlinkDir changed  
events.js:141 
      throw er; // Unhandled 'error' event
      ^ 
Error: watch /lost+found EACCES 
    at exports._errnoException (util.js:907:11)   
    at FSWatcher.start (fs.js:1234:19)
    at Object.fs.watch (fs.js:1262:11)  

[simondass]

I've not added anything to my .foreverignore file so cannot comment on the correct format, but I was getting this error until I;
a) Created an empty .foreverignore in my project root
b) Used the --watchDirectory option and set it to my project root
i.e. forever -w --watchDirectory ./ myscript.js

Obviously change the watch dir as required.

[askanhan]

I've not added anything to my .foreverignore file so cannot comment on the correct format, but I was getting this error until I;
a) Created an empty .foreverignore in my project root
b) Used the --watchDirectory option and set it to my project root
i.e. forever -w --watchDirectory ./ myscript.js

Obviously change the watch dir as required.

can't do that since creating a file starting with '.' is not permitted in Windows...