Watch Mode and Hot Reload

During development, you can use various tools to automatically recompile or refresh your application whenever code changes are detected.

cargo-watch Crate

The cargo-watch crate has long been one of the most popular tools for watching source code changes and automatically recompiling the project.

You can install it with:

cargo install cargo-watch

However, cargo-watch is limited to recompiling and restarting the application. It does not provide a full hot reload experience on its own.

Hot Reload with subsecond and dioxus-cli

The Dioxus team maintains tools like subsecond, which enable a smoother hot reload experience compatible with Axum and other crates in the ecosystem.

To use this workflow in a Sword project:

1. Enable the hot-reload feature in your Cargo.toml:

[dependencies]
sword = { version = "x.y.z", features = ["hot-reload"] }

2. Install dioxus-cli:

cargo install dioxus-cli

3. Run your application with dx serve:

dx serve

This command serves a similar role to cargo run but within a hot-reload-oriented development flow.

When to use each option?

• Use cargo-watch if you only need automatic recompilation and restarts.
• Use subsecond + dioxus-cli if you want a development experience closer to true hot reload.