Re: filenotify.el

[Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca>]

> Just to be sure. The different low-level packages are not fully
> compatible (event names differ, for example); it would be a nightmare
> for filenotify.el when the different packages compete under the hood.

Why would they compete?  In the unlikely case that both gfilenotify and
inotify are provided, can't the code just use one of the two without
being impacted by the other?  If not, why not?  Can we fix it so as to
avoid such conflicts?

> In general, it could be possible to apply several low-level file
> notification libraries in parallel. But this wouldn't bring additional
> features, so we should avoid this.

Agreed, but the better option is to make sure they don't conflict with
each other, and then make filenotify.el choose one of the available ones
"arbitrarily".

We may also want to tweak configure to avod building Emacs with support
for multiple file notification systems, but if we assume a future with
FFI, then multiple notification systems may occur dynamically and there
isn't any good reason to really disallow it.


        Stefan