Question about supported platforms in polling watcher

[BreyerW]

@danmosemsft anyone knows if this project is platform agnostic (in other words should run anywhere where net core runs) in current shape? In the past when it was starting i remember this project heavily depended on some platform specific file structures and thus making it work on several platforms was tricky but recently i revisited the source code and saw almost no platform specific api except simple query for underlying os to configure path string or somesuch. But im a little hesitant to go and take dependecy on this project since i could have missed something....

And do you think its good enough for production or are there still some important pieces missing?

[danmoseley]

I actually don't know the status of System.IO.FileSystem.Watcher.Polling. We now have another polling file system watcher in Microsoft.Extensions.FileProviders.Physical:
https://github.com/dotnet/runtime/blob/c87e75e8ef260ccc6e979f9df1cc012536ee036f/src/libraries/Microsoft.Extensions.FileProviders.Physical/src/PhysicalFileProvider.cs#L85

@eerhardt do you have context on this package? What is its future?

[BreyerW]

@danmosemsft ohh i never saw this project despite being relatively active lurker in runtime repo thanks. Still it would be nice to clarify the future of this package and maybe compare it against this new polling watcher?

[eerhardt]

Looks like @KrzysztofCwalina created it about 5 years ago, and it hasn't gotten much interest in the past 2 years.

Also tagging @JeremyKuhne who did some work on it years ago.

I'd propose we delete/archive this project as it appears to be inactive.

[JeremyKuhne]

Given the extensions watcher I don't know of a reason to keep this around.

[BreyerW]

@JeremyKuhne just to be on the same page you mean FileProviders.Physical correct?

I have skimmed over this project and while i think ii will work to me it seems much less intuitive for general use and cant set your own interval (is hardcoded to 4 secs) when you need it although i guess i can reimplement it using watch(string)?

[JeremyKuhne]

just to be on the same page you mean FileProviders.Physical correct?

Yes, that was what I was referring to. Generally speaking, enhancing/improving one we already ship is a better place to start than adding a new one.