So, I need to monitor a fairly large nested directory tree for changes on Linux. It seems like there are a few different watcher modules that I could use – fsnotify and notify being the main ones, both of which use the inotify interface and attempt to set watches on each individual subdirectory and maintain all their watchers as things change. I have way too many directories for that to be a workable approach. It looks like the underlying issue is just that this is a difficult problem on Linux; both inotify and fanotify have some issues which make them difficult for library authors to use to present a clean and useful API.

Long story short - I coded up an fanotify-based solution which seems like a good start of what I need, and I’m planning on sharing it back in the hopes that it’s useful. I guess my question is, did I miss something? Is there already an easy and straightforward way to monitor a big directory for changes?