inotify for asyncio
inotipy is a high-level Python wrapper for the Linux [`inotify(7)`](http://man7.org/linux/man-pages/man7/inotify.7.html) API, that is designed to work with [`asyncio`](https://docs.python.org/3/library/asyncio.html) event loops in Python 3.5 or later. This lets you efficiently monitor one or more files or directories for interesting happenings, without having to continually poll the filesystem. But note, however, that if events are coming too thick and fast, the kernel is liable to start dropping them, which will be reported to you by events with the `IN.Q_OVERFLOW` bit set. Basic Usage =========== Let us say there is a directory, initially empty, called “test”. The following script monitors that for changes: import sys import asyncio import inotipy loop = asyncio.get_event_loop() paths_to_watch = ["test"] # edit as necessary async def mainline() : watcher = inotipy.Watcher.create() for path in paths_to_watch : watcher.watch(path, inotipy.IN.ALL_EVENTS) #end for while True : event = await watcher.get() sys.stdout.write("Got event: %s\n" % repr(event)) #end while #end mainline loop.run_until_complete(mainline()) Suppose we start the script, and then in another terminal session perform the following series of command-line actions: $ echo hi >test/f1 $ mv test/f1 test/f2 $ cat test/f2 $ rm test/f2 $ rmdir test then we should see the script report an event stream something like this: Got event: Event(1, [<EVENT_BIT.CREATE: 8>], 0, 'f1') Got event: Event(1, [<EVENT_BIT.OPEN: 5>], 0, 'f1') Got event: Event(1, [<EVENT_BIT.MODIFY: 1>], 0, 'f1') Got event: Event(1, [<EVENT_BIT.CLOSE_WRITE: 3>], 0, 'f1') Got event: Event(1, [<EVENT_BIT.MOVED_FROM: 6>], 217185, 'f1') Got event: Event(1, [<EVENT_BIT.MOVED_TO: 7>], 217185, 'f2') Got event: Event(1, [<EVENT_BIT.OPEN: 5>], 0, 'f2') Got event: Event(1, [<EVENT_BIT.ACCESS: 0>], 0, 'f2') Got event: Event(1, [<EVENT_BIT.CLOSE_NOWRITE: 4>], 0, 'f2') Got event: Event(1, [<EVENT_BIT.DELETE: 9>], 0, 'f2') Got event: Event(1, [<EVENT_BIT.DELETE_SELF: 10>], 0, '') Got event: Event(1, [<EVENT_BIT.IGNORED: 15>], 0, '') That should give you the basic flavour. For more elaborate examples, see my `inotipy_examples` repo ([GitLab](https://gitlab.com/ldo/inotipy_examples), [GitHub](https://github.com/ldo/inotipy_examples)). There is more functionality available: see the `inotify(7)` man page for more details, and of course the documentation in `inotify.py` itself. Lawrence D'Oliveiro <ldo@geek-central.gen.nz> 2018 March 11