Motivation

For some time there has been a desire to provide file system notifications in the standard library. See
golang/go#4068 (was https://code.google.com/p/go/issues/detail?id=4068).

This would allow the tools that ship with Go to use it:

• go/cmd http://golang.org/s/go13fsnotify
• GoDoc https://code.google.com/p/go/issues/detail?id=3386

It may start as an internal package while working to solidify the API. Once exposed in the standard library, fsnotify will need to adhere to the Go 1.0 guarantee for backwards compatibility. It is not yet ready for that kind of guarantee.

System requirements

Go 1.3 requires Linux 2.6.23 or OS X 10.6.

• If we use IN_NONBLOCK (inotify blocks #5) fsnotify would require Linux 2.6.27.
• FSEvents supports 10.6, but watching individual files requires 10.7. (kFSEventStreamCreateFlagFileEvents)

CLA

All contributors to fsnotify are asked to sign Google's CLA. @bradfitz added many contributors to Go AUTHORS in the past (see howeyc/fsnotify#85).

New AUTHORS since then will need to be added.