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Does anybody know of tool for Linux that can watch a custom subtree of the filesystem for changes, and executes a custom command when a change occurs ?

Such a tool would be very useful to quickly setup automatic building or uploading of source files.

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You can use inotifywait from inotifytools:

This command simply blocks for inotify events, making it appropriate for use in shell scripts. It can watch any set of files and directories, and can recursively watch entire directory trees.

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Thanks, works perfectly. Wrapped in a loop: while [ TRUE ] ; do inotifywait -r . ; ./make.sh ; done – Tomas Sep 16 '10 at 10:49
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@Tomas: while true; do – grawity Sep 17 '10 at 14:25
Or for extreme brevity: while :; do – Dennis Williamson Sep 17 '10 at 14:53
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