with selenium

doc-watch-selenium.py

#!/usr/bin/env python
import os
import subprocess
import sys
from urllib import pathname2url
import selenium.webdriver

def run():
    watch_command = 'inotifywait -rq -e close_write --exclude \'"*.html"\' .'.split()
    make_command = 'make html'.split()
    driver = selenium.webdriver.Firefox()
    path = os.path.join('_build', 'html', 'index.html')
    url = 'file:///' + pathname2url(os.path.abspath(path))
    driver.get(url)
    while True:
        # Perhaps should put notifier access in a mutex - not bothering yet
        notifier = subprocess.Popen(watch_command)
        notifier.wait()
        subprocess.call(make_command)
        driver.refresh()

if __name__ == "__main__":
    if not os.path.isdir('_build'):
        # very simplistic sanity check. Works for me, as I generally use
        # sphinx-quickstart defaults
        print('You must run this application from a Sphinx directory containing _build')
        rc = 1
    else:
        run()

    sys.exit(0)