Watchdog: Doesn't detect file modification with vim on OSX 10.7

[datakurre]

At first, FSEvents-support works beautifully on OSX now. Thank you!

Unfortunately, watchdot cannot detect vim saving modifications to an existing file on a mac.

I traced it here:
https://github.com/gorakhargosh/watchdog/blob/master/src/watchdog/utils/dirsnapshot.py#L95

I have no idea why, but it seems that when vim saves a file, it gets a new inode number and watchdog cannot categorize the event and ignores it.

An example stat info from ref_dirsnap:

posix.stat_result(st_mode=33188, st_ino=51180728, st_dev=234881027L, st_nlink=1, st_uid=501, st_gid=20, st_size=2756, st_atime=1313212427, st_mtime=1313212426, st_ctime=1313212426)

The same stat info from dirsnap:

posix.stat_result(st_mode=33188, st_ino=51180736, st_dev=234881027L, st_nlink=1, st_uid=501, st_gid=20, st_size=2756, st_atime=1313212514, st_mtime=1313212514, st_ctime=1313212514)

Some other editors, e.g. TextMate work correctly (st_ino doesn't change and modification is detected correctly).

[datakurre]

For those, who cannot wait for fix (to either vim or watchog; I don't know, which one is correct), you can make watchdog a little dummier in detecting modifications:

diff --git a/src/watchdog/utils/dirsnapshot.py b/src/watchdog/utils/dirsnapshot.py
index dbd121b..0d91fcc 100644
--- a/src/watchdog/utils/dirsnapshot.py
+++ b/src/watchdog/utils/dirsnapshot.py
@@ -92,7 +92,7 @@ class DirectorySnapshotDiff(object):
         for path, stat_info in dirsnap.stat_snapshot.items():
             if path in ref_dirsnap.stat_snapshot:
                 ref_stat_info = ref_dirsnap.stat_info(path)
-                if stat_info.st_ino == ref_stat_info.st_ino and stat_info.st_mtime != ref_stat_info.
+                if stat_info.st_mtime != ref_stat_info.st_mtime:
                     if stat.S_ISDIR(stat_info.st_mode):
                         self._dirs_modified.append(path)
                     else:

[gorakhargosh]

When you save a file called foobar.txt using Vim, it essentially creates
a foobar.txt.swp file in the same directory as the file, deletes the old
one, and renames the .swp file to the original filename. So, it would be
wiser to use a pattern with a command instead like so :

$ watchmedo log --pattern="*.swp;*.py;*.~;*.rb" --recursive .

[gorakhargosh]

Update:

Here's a better way. You can disable swap file creation in Vim.

:set noswapfile

in your ~/.vimrc and you don't need to edit either watchdog or
write a pattern. This will keep monitoring working as you expect it to.

[datakurre]

I also found out that there's on option for that in vim.

:set nowritebackup

Now there's a plenty of options to make either vim or watchdog behave :)

I thank you very much and consider this closed.

[datakurre]

One final comment. Actually, I had to disable backups completely by

:set nobackup
:set nowritebackup

(or set those in ~/.vimrc) to prevent vim for creating a new file on save and watchdog detect it.

I also wonder, why :set nowswapfile had no effect for me. Anyway, I'm quite happy now.

[jholster]

I'm facing the same issue with Espresso editor (on OS X) which unfortunately has no configuration option for that. According to ls -i, Espresso creates new file on every save. Any changes that this could be resolved on watchdog level?

[modocache]

Thanks for watchdog, and for this issue! This ended up working for me as well:

:set nobackup
:set nowritebackup

+1 to reopen. Users who don't happen upon the workaround here will assume watchdog is broken--I did. Meanwhile, similar tools like watchr "just work", without changing any Vim settings. watchdog is awesome, but I wish I didn't have to change my vimrc in order to use it.