Re: [Caml-list] Inotify binding

[Aleksey Nogin <nogin@metaprl.org>]

On 21.11.2006 16:16, Vincent Hanquez wrote:

> On Tue, Nov 21, 2006 at 11:55:46PM +0000, Richard Jones wrote:
>> On Tue, Nov 21, 2006 at 09:18:34PM +0100, Vincent Hanquez wrote:
>>> I've made a small bindings for inotify, aka linux file system notification
>>> new subsystem.
>> I think OMake includes bindings for gamin.
> 
> it seems to be talking FAM.

Actually, in our LibMojave (which is what OMake uses) we have bindings for:
 - FAM
 - Gamin (using either the generic FAM interface, or taking advantage of
Gamin extensions)
 - kqueue (FreeBSD, OS X)
 - inotify (Linux)
 - ??? (Win32) - not sure what exactly is used there

In all five cases, we provide the _same_ fam-style interface on the
OCaml side. We also have OMake autoconf-style scripts that can detect
which of the fours notification mechanisms is present on a specific
machine and use the appropriate one.

> Sounds more like a bad thing than a good thing to me.
> Direct inotify binding are much smaller/simpler anyway.

That might be true, but only if you happen to be on a machine that
provides inotify. We do utilize inotify if it is present, but we also
have an option of using one of the other four when there is no inotify.

Aleksey