executable file not found in $PATH error for an alias I have

[nikitavoloboev]

I have an alias that I want to run when a file changes so I enter this command :

reflex -g '*.go' afl where afl is an alias that runs a command. I get an error. that executable file is not found in $PATH even though the alias is in the path.

[nikitavoloboev]

Just checked and if I actually run the commands that this is alias is for, it works. I would still prefer to use an alias if possible. Not sure why it doesn't work.

[cespare]

Do you mean a bash/other shell alias? Reflex is just execing a program; it cannot evaluate a shell alias.

(I'm not even sure how this could work.)

[nikitavoloboev]

Yeah, zsh alias actually. I was not aware that you can't exec aliases. I guess I will write out the full name of the command instead of the alias. Alias just saves typing for me.

[pre]

Same idea, different use case: support having an environment variable in reflex.conf.

So that you could share the same config and change the actual runnable application using an environment variable.

For example:

# Run "yarn install" when package.json changes
--start-service=false \
  --shutdown-timeout=3s \
  -r '^package.json' \
  -- \
    yarn install

# Restart server when code changes
--start-service=true \
  --shutdown-timeout=3s \
  -r '\.js$' \
  -R '^node_modules/' \
  -- \
    $APP_CMD

At the moment this will fail since $APP_CMD is not interpolated. Reflex could still use exec internally, if it just interpolated the environment variable first.

FWIW, current error message is [01] exec: "$APP_CMD": executable file not found in $PATH since it tries to exec for the literal variable name.