[Haskell-cafe] inotify-alike for mac os x?

[Ross Mellgren]

Well, I don't think anything bad will happen, but I think I remember  
there being no/little buffering, so your program had to be responsive  
if you wanted to get the events. fseventsd is a daemon on top that  
keeps logs, so you can read them at leisure.

I'm sorry I can't find the original article I had read to learn this,  
otherwise I'd link you directly so you could make your own judgements.

I think the decision between the two is primarily based on your use  
case. If you are intended to run continuously and handling each event  
will probably not use that many resources (as to not bog down the  
system as you receive many file system events), and you need real-time  
tracking, kqueue is for you.

Conversely, if you need to know things changed soon after, but not  
immediately, and especially if you don't want to be running  
continuously, then fseventsd is for you.

This is my understanding, not having used either directly (I've only  
used inotify on linux).

-Ross

On Dec 4, 2009, at 11:39 AM, Svein Ove Aas wrote:

> On Fri, Dec 4, 2009 at 5:31 PM, Ross Mellgren <rmm-haskell at z.odi.ac>  
> wrote:
>> kqueue is the "low level" interface, but requires that you handle  
>> all file
>> system events as they happen, and fast.
>>
> For the purposes of creating a binding in haskell, my preferred way
> would be to use the low-level interface and build saner abstractions
> on top of that; it would be trivial to buffer them haskell-side.
>
> That said.. you say you have to handle the events "fast". What happens
> if you don't?
>
> -- 
> Svein Ove Aas