fsautoproc

fsautoproc is a basic C utility for when:

• you have a large directory of various files
• that when a new file with a specific file extension is added, modified, or removed,
• you want to run a series of commands (likely using the filepath as an argument)

e.g. you have a large folder of PDFs that is published to a web server. When a new PDF is added, or an existing PDF is modified, you wish to strip any unnecessary file metadata and generate a thumbnail image. If the PDF file is removed, its thumbnail is removed as well.

fsautoproc does not (yet):

• re-generate broken file system state (e.g. you manually delete a generated thumbnail, fsautoproc will log an error for the missing file but does not automatically regenerate the file)

Before using, consider:

• fsautoproc is not a daemon. It is intended to be run as a cron job or a systemd timer.
• fsautoproc is not a live file system watcher. It scans for modified files on each run.
• This is a C utility invoking shell commands. Be mindful of the serious security implications of running arbitrary shell commands and use restricted user accounts.
• Like most C code you find on the internet, fsautoproc was built for a specific hobby purpose with arbitrary C99 opinions and may not be reasonable for your use case.

Building

fsautoproc is built with CMake. You will need a C99 compiler and CMake installed. The utility is primarily written for use on Linux and BSD systems (including macOS). It may work on Windows with WSL or Cygwin, but this is currently untested.

1. Clone the repository and its submodules: git clone --recursive https://github.com/Cryptkeeper/fsautoproc
2. Build the CMake project with cmake -B build .
3. Compile the project with cmake --build build
4. Optionally install binary using make install

Dependencies

Your build environment must provide:

• cJSON

Git submodules provide:

• sha-2
• log.c

Usage

$ fsautoproc -h
Usage: fsautoproc

Options:
  -c <file>   Configuration file (default: `fsautoproc.json`)
  -i <file>   File index write path
  -s <dir>    Search directory root (default: `.`)