Why watchFile on Linux?

[mishoo]

I noticed that here https://github.com/paulmillr/chokidar/blob/master/src/index.coffee#L114 Chokidar decides to use fs.watchFile on Linux, and that one polls. I'm no expert on this, but I thought fs.watch is stable on Linux.. any reason to not use it?

[paulmillr]

I believe fs.watch is still unstable even though docs say otherwise.

Reported bugs were not closed: https://github.com/joyent/node/search?q=fs.watch&ref=cmdform&type=Issues

nodejs/node-v0.x-archive#3172 is a good example.

If it was as reliable as watchFile, I’d switch to it, as I like performance.

[alextreppass]

Can the choice of using watch vs watchFile be configurable? Leaving it up to the user would mitigate #50 and #52

[paulmillr]

fixed. you can specify fs.watch now.