comparison: fsmonitor, nimwatch, nim-fswatch

[timotheecour]

/cc @bluenote10 @dom96 @snowlt23

the readme.md doesn't contain much so was wondering:

• how does this compare to related packages?
• does this work on OSX? linux? windows?
• is this still maintained?
• is that appropriate for use case as mentioned here:
• https://forum.nim-lang.org/t/3159#19956 ? (FSMonitor - Nim forum)
• Portable fsmonitor · Issue #6718 · nim-lang/Nim

related packages

• [1] https://github.com/snowlt23/nimwatch readme says windows (win32api) and linux (inotify); osx and freebsd are marked as TODO

• [2] https://github.com/idlewan/nim-fswatch (this one)

• [3]lib/packages/fsmonitor.nim from nim stdlib https://github.com/nim-lang/Nim/blob/27b081d1f77604ee47c886e69dbc52f53ea3741f/lib/packages/fsmonitor.nim only works on linux (via inotify) and seems deprecated

in D

there's this: https://code.dlang.org/packages/fswatch

Platform	Watching Directory	Watching File
Windows	ReadDirectoryChangesW (very fast, accurate)	polling using std.file.timeLastModified and std.file.exists (fast, not accurate for quick write)
Linux	inotify (very fast, accurate)	inotify (very fast, accurate)
Other	polling using std.file.dirEntries (slow, not accurate)	polling using std.file.timeLastModified and std.file.exists (fast, not accurate for quick write)

note

was about to recommend Nim in this post https://forum.dlang.org/thread/igsegyczboysopismnft@forum.dlang.org (Can i watch folders/files for changes with D language?) (he was looking for a viable language with cross platform gui + file monitoring) but lack of file monitoring seems a blocker for that

[timotheecour]

=> moving discussion to this new repo which seems to be maintained and works on OSX: https://github.com/paul-nameless/nim-fswatch/issues/1