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-rw-r--r--ev.pod18
1 files changed, 18 insertions, 0 deletions
diff --git a/ev.pod b/ev.pod
index ac964a9..de0666b 100644
--- a/ev.pod
+++ b/ev.pod
@@ -1498,6 +1498,22 @@ to fall back to regular polling again even with inotify, but changes are
usually detected immediately, and if the file exists there will be no
polling.
+=head3 Inotify
+
+When C<inotify (7)> support has been compiled into libev (generally only
+available on Linux) and present at runtime, it will be used to speed up
+change detection where possible. The inotify descriptor will be created lazily
+when the first C<ev_stat> watcher is being started.
+
+Inotify presense does not change the semantics of C<ev_stat> watchers
+except that changes might be detected earlier, and in some cases, to avoid
+making regular C<stat> calls. Even in the presense of inotify support
+there are many cases where libev has to resort to regular C<stat> polling.
+
+(There is no support for kqueue, as apparently it cannot be used to
+implement this functionality, due to the requirement of having a file
+descriptor open on the object at all times).
+
=head3 The special problem of stat time resolution
The C<stat ()> syscall only supports full-second resolution portably, and
@@ -1562,6 +1578,8 @@ The filesystem path that is being watched.
=back
+=head3 Examples
+
Example: Watch C</etc/passwd> for attribute changes.
static void