Clone this repo:
  1. 1485a34 Also create epoll and pipe fds with close-on-exec (#155) (#219) by Johannes Ebke · 6 years ago main master
  2. 11844c0 readme: remove AppVeyor badge by Nathan Youngman · 6 years ago
  3. 85de84f Add windows to travis matrix by Brian Goff · 6 years ago
  4. 2216558 Fix lint issue with error doc string by Brian Goff · 6 years ago
  5. 9152fb1 only run golint on latest version of go by Brian Goff · 6 years ago

File system notifications for Go

GoDoc Go Report Card

fsnotify utilizes golang.org/x/sys rather than syscall from the standard library. Ensure you have the latest version installed by running:

go get -u golang.org/x/sys/...

Cross platform: Windows, Linux, BSD and macOS.

AdapterOSStatus
inotifyLinux 2.6.27 or later, Android*Supported Build Status
kqueueBSD, macOS, iOS*Supported Build Status
ReadDirectoryChangesWWindowsSupported Build Status
FSEventsmacOSPlanned
FENSolaris 11In Progress
fanotifyLinux 2.6.37+
USN JournalsWindowsMaybe
PollingAllMaybe

* Android and iOS are untested.

Please see the documentation and consult the FAQ for usage information.

API stability

fsnotify is a fork of howeyc/fsnotify with a new API as of v1.0. The API is based on this design document.

All releases are tagged based on Semantic Versioning. Further API changes are planned, and will be tagged with a new major revision number.

Go 1.6 supports dependencies located in the vendor/ folder. Unless you are creating a library, it is recommended that you copy fsnotify into vendor/github.com/fsnotify/fsnotify within your project, and likewise for golang.org/x/sys.

Contributing

Please refer to CONTRIBUTING before opening an issue or pull request.

Example

See example_test.go.

FAQ

When a file is moved to another directory is it still being watched?

No (it shouldn't be, unless you are watching where it was moved to).

When I watch a directory, are all subdirectories watched as well?

No, you must add watches for any directory you want to watch (a recursive watcher is on the roadmap #18).

Do I have to watch the Error and Event channels in a separate goroutine?

As of now, yes. Looking into making this single-thread friendly (see howeyc #7)

Why am I receiving multiple events for the same file on OS X?

Spotlight indexing on OS X can result in multiple events (see howeyc #62). A temporary workaround is to add your folder(s) to the Spotlight Privacy settings until we have a native FSEvents implementation (see #11).

How many files can be watched at once?

There are OS-specific limits as to how many watches can be created:

  • Linux: /proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_user_watches contains the limit, reaching this limit results in a “no space left on device” error.
  • BSD / OSX: sysctl variables “kern.maxfiles” and “kern.maxfilesperproc”, reaching these limits results in a “too many open files” error.

Related Projects