shwoop

A development server for static web content with hot reload and optional build integration. Perfect for developing static-content and documentation generator like rustdoc, mdbook, typedoc, etc.

This tool serves files from a directory, watches for changes in output and source, and builds the website and updates connected browsers when a change is detected. It aims to match the experience of Hot Module Reloading (HMR), meaning only the pargs that changed in a page will be reloaded instead of a full page reload, resulting in a smoother development experience.

Usually, the web frameworks are able to support HMR because they understand how the full app is built. To achieve this for any static website, this tool injects a client that replaces the page with an <iframe> that serves the same page. When reloading, it creates a new <iframe> and loads the content in the background, restoring state, and swaps the frames when the new frame is fully loaded.

Installation

To try out the tool, the easiest way is to use cargo-binstall (which can be installed without cargo or Rust toolchain). It sources the binaries from GitHub releases. Alternatively you can download the binaries from GitHub release directly.

cargo-binstall shwoop --only-signed

To build from Rust source + published JS assets (requires Rust)

cargo install shwoop

Building from only sources in this repo requires Rust, NodeJS and PNPM

pnpm install
pnpm exec monolint --config
pnpm exec vite build
cargo build --release

Usage

shwoop <PATH> [OPTIONS] [-- COMMAND...]

PATH is the output directory (or file) to serve. If a build command is provided, shwoop runs it whenever watched files change before reloading connected browsers. -w/--watch switches can specify additional source directories to watch that will trigger the build command when changed. PATH will not trigger build command.

For more options, see shwoop --help

Examples

Serve and watch dist as output directory with no build step:

shwoop dist

Build documentation with cargo and serve, rebuild and reload whenever src changes.

shwoop target/doc -w src -- cargo doc

Plain file server with no reload machinery

shwoop dist --raw