Thanks for the pointer Michael.

I am puzzled. Of course filenotify does not work for me (it used to work; I
wrote this elisp snippet that used this feature:
http://emacs.stackexchange.com/a/2566/115).

The value of `file-notify--library` is `'gfilenotify` but the feature
doesn't work for me. Any pointers?

The test code evalling did not trigger the `my-notify-callback` function
and so no "Event .." messages in my *Messages* buffer.

On Wed, Apr 29, 2015 at 3:26 PM Michael Albinus <michael.albinus@gmx.de>
wrote:

> Hi,
>
> first of all, it might be interesting to know whether file notifications
> do work at all on your system. What is the value of `file-notify--library'?
> I suppose it is 'gfilenotify.
>
> Could you, please, perform the following forms then:
>
> (require 'filenotify)
> (defun my-notify-callback (event)
>   (message "Event %S" event))
> (file-notify-add-watch
>   "/tmp" '(change attribute-change) 'my-notify-callback)
> (write-region "foo" nil "/tmp/foo")
> (write-region "bla" nil "/tmp/foo")
> (set-file-modes "/tmp/foo" (default-file-modes))
>
> Tell, whether you see related messages in the *Messages* buffer.
>
> Best regards, Michael.
>