fswatch isn't following symbolic links

[seaside98]

Fswatch does not follow symbolic links to watch events within the symbolic link. I am running

fswatch -Lr /dir/with/symb/inside

I have also tried --follow-links, with no results. Hopefully this isn't just an issue with me.

OSX yosemite
fswatch 1.4.7

[emcrisostomo]

I just tried to replicate your issues but I don't find any problem:

% fswatch --version
fswatch 1.4.7
...
% mkdir ${HOME}/temp
% ln -s ${HOME}/temp ${HOME}/mylink
% fswatch -Lr ${HOME}/mylink

From another terminal:

% touch ${HOME}/mylink/test.txt

and fswatch outputs (${HOME} is a placeholder):

${HOME}/temp/test.txt Created IsFile

Could you confirm you are affected by this problem?

[seaside98]

Perhaps I am using it wrong, is there not support for nested symbolic links?

% ln -s ${HOME}/temp ${HOME}/folder/mylink 
% fswatch -Lr ${HOME}/folder

On Jul 19, 2015, at 7:21 AM, Enrico Maria Crisostomo [email protected] wrote:

I just tried to replicate your issues but I don't find any problem:

% fswatch --version
fswatch 1.4.7
...
% mkdir ${HOME}/temp
% ln -s ${HOME}/temp ${HOME}/mylink
% fswatch -Lr ${HOME}/mylink
From another terminal:

% touch ${HOME}/mylink/test.txt
and fswatch outputs (${HOME} is a placeholder):

${HOME}/temp/two.txt Created IsFile
Could you confirm you are affected by this problem?

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[emcrisostomo]

Symlink resolution is guaranteed when parsing command line arguments but then each monitor has its own characteristics. You are running fswatch on OS X and I assume you are using the FSEvents monitor: in this case, the -L option has no effect since the FSEvents API does not offer this behaviour.

Monitors using other APIs, such as kqueue and inotify, have to scan the file system anyway and adding this behaviour was straightforward.

[seaside98]

Ah, that explains it. Thank you very much!

On Jul 19, 2015, at 11:16 AM, Enrico Maria Crisostomo [email protected] wrote:

Symlink resolution is guaranteed when parsing command line arguments but then each monitor has its own characteristics. You are running fswatch on OS X and I assume you are using the FSEvents monitor: in this case, the -L option has no effect since the FSEvents API does not offer this behaviour.

Monitors using other APIs, such as kqueue and inotify, have to scan the file system anyway and adding this behaviour was straightforward.

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[emcrisostomo]

You're welcome @seaside98