Deliver an event enum with the queue overflow as its own case

The stream's element is now the enum InotifyEvent, and the struct that
describes a change to a watched item is FileSystemEvent. A queue
overflow was an event with descriptor -1 and an empty path that every
consumer had to know about; as a case, the compiler makes them handle
it. The enum is also where failed watches of a growing tree will be
reported, since no call site can catch them.
This commit is contained in:
T. R. Bernstein
2026-09-19 00:10:35 +02:00
parent f01e16e864
commit 3c852a565c
8 changed files with 94 additions and 52 deletions
+8 -2
View File
@@ -4,14 +4,19 @@ Monitor filesystem events on Linux using modern Swift concurrency.
## Overview
The Inotify library wraps the Linux [inotify](https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/inotify.7.html) API in a Swift-native interface built around actors and async sequences. You create an ``Inotify/Inotify`` actor, add watches for the paths you care about, and iterate over the ``Inotify/Inotify/events`` property to receive ``InotifyEvent`` values as they occur.
The Inotify library wraps the Linux [inotify](https://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/inotify.7.html) API in a Swift-native interface built around actors and async sequences. You create an ``Inotify/Inotify`` actor, add watches for the paths you care about, and iterate over the ``Inotify/Inotify/events`` property to receive ``InotifyEvent`` values as they occur. Most of them carry a ``FileSystemEvent`` describing a change to a watched item; the others tell you when the instance cannot deliver every change, such as after a kernel queue overflow.
```swift
let inotify = try Inotify()
try inotify.addWatch(path: "/tmp/inbox", mask: [.create, .modify])
for await event in await inotify.events {
print("\(event.mask) at \(event.path)")
switch event {
case .fileSystem(let change):
print("\(change.mask) at \(change.path)")
case .queueOverflow:
print("events were dropped, rescan")
}
}
```
@@ -30,6 +35,7 @@ All public types conform to `Sendable`, so they can be safely passed across conc
- ``Inotify/Inotify``
- ``InotifyEvent``
- ``FileSystemEvent``
- ``InotifyEventMask``
### Articles
@@ -31,7 +31,7 @@ let descriptors = try await inotify.addWatchWithAutomaticSubtreeWatching(
)
```
Internally this listens for `CREATE` and `MOVED_TO` events carrying the ``InotifyEventMask/isDir`` flag and installs new watches with the same mask on the subdirectory and its subtree whenever one appears. Items that already exist inside such a subdirectory are reported with ``InotifyEvent/synthesized`` set to `true`, since the kernel never produces events for them; a synthesized event may duplicate a kernel event for the same item.
Internally this listens for `CREATE` and `MOVED_TO` events carrying the ``InotifyEventMask/isDir`` flag and installs new watches with the same mask on the subdirectory and its subtree whenever one appears. Items that already exist inside such a subdirectory are reported with ``FileSystemEvent/synthesized`` set to `true`, since the kernel never produces events for them; a synthesized event may duplicate a kernel event for the same item.
When a directory is moved out of the watched tree, the watches on it and on its subdirectories are removed, so no events are reported under the stale path.