The watch command
The watch
command is useful when you want your book to be rendered on every
file change. You could repeatedly issue mdbook build
every time a file is
changed. But using mdbook watch
once will watch your files and will trigger a
build automatically whenever you modify a file; this includes re-creating
deleted files still mentioned in SUMMARY.md
!
Specify a directory
The watch
command can take a directory as an argument to use as the book's
root instead of the current working directory.
mdbook watch path/to/book
--open
When you use the --open
(-o
) option, mdbook will open the rendered book in
your default web browser.
--dest-dir
The --dest-dir
(-d
) option allows you to change the output directory for the
book. Relative paths are interpreted relative to the book's root directory. If
not specified it will default to the value of the build.build-dir
key in
book.toml
, or to ./book
.
Specify exclude patterns
The watch
command will not automatically trigger a build for files listed in
the .gitignore
file in the book root directory. The .gitignore
file may
contain file patterns described in the gitignore
documentation. This can be useful for
ignoring temporary files created by some editors.
Note: Only .gitignore
from book root directory is used. Global
$HOME/.gitignore
or .gitignore
files in parent directories are not used.