2026-04-16 Use Oddμ to watch over a directory

I was wondering how to expand on the use of Oddμ as a static site generator. Here's an idea.

To implement a static site that gets updated whenever the page files are updated, use a Makefile to produce a HTML file for every Markdown file and then use a directory watcher such as `entr` to run `make` whenever Markdown files change or get added.

Makefile:

SHELL = sh

all: $(patsubst %.md,%.html,$(wildcard *.md)) feed.xml

run:
	while true; do sleep 0.1; ls *.md | entr -d make; done

%.html: %.md
	if test "$<" != index.md -a "$<" != changes.md; then oddmu notify "$<"; fi
	oddmu html -template static.html "$<" > "$@"

feed.xml: index.md
	oddmu feed - < "$<" > "$@"

To start:

make run

The while loop of `make run` works as follows: The `ls` command feeds all the Markdown files in the current directory to `entr`. The `-d` flag causes `entr` to exit if a new file is added to the directory, redoing the loop and sending an updated list of Markdown files in the current directory to `entr`.

The rules ensure that any Markdown file that's changed triggers `oddmu notify` except for `index.md` and `change.md` (since `oddmu notify` changes these two) and `oddmu html` is used to generate the HTML using the `static.html` template.

The feed is regenerated using `oddmu feed` if `index.md` changes.

Now you can update the Markdown files with an editor, or upload Markdown files using `rsync` or `scp` and it'll work.

To learn more, see the man pages of oddmu notify, oddmu html and oddmu feed.

oddmu notify

oddmu html

oddmu feed

​#Oddμ

**2026-04-21**. I feel the urge to implement a `daemon` or `watch` subcommand that watches over the filesystem and regenerates the files as necessary. The benefit would be that it already knows about all the subdirectories and it work on platforms such as Windows without a decent scripting environment. Then again, if you're really into Windows, you can figure out how to do it. I also don't know if there is even one Windows user.