I've updated the repository to make this easier. There's now a script called run-news to bring up the HN server.
$ git pull
Now you should be able to run your server in a loop like this:
$ while true; do ./run-news; sleep 5; done
Let me know if you run into trouble with this. I'll be around and more responsive for the next few days.
More notes, just for future reference:
1. run-news provides an interactive prompt, so you can make changes to the server without needing to restart it. Just remember to also modify news.arc otherwise your changes will be lost when the server dies next.
2. The sleep above is to help exit the server. If you quit the server as usual it'll just come up again. To bring it down, hit ctrl-c twice in succession.
3. I also fixed up the readme, which was abysmally out of date. Sorry about that.
error: Your local changes to the following files would be overwritten by merge:
lib/news.arc
Please, commit your changes or stash them before you can merge.
Aborting