Arch Linux

Master One

Member

From: Europe

Registered: 2007-01-21

Posts: 249

XFCE4.4.0: Does Thunar use FAM or inotify?

I am not sure, I read on a mailinglist, that thunar will not support inotify, because it's a Linux-only feature.

So is it correct, that I have to start the FAM daemon on boot?

ozar

Member

From: USA

Registered: 2005-02-18

Posts: 1,686

Re: XFCE4.4.0: Does Thunar use FAM or inotify?

Have a look here for Thunar dependencies:

http://www.archlinux.org/packages/12371/

---

oz

Master One

Member

From: Europe

Registered: 2007-01-21

Posts: 249

Re: XFCE4.4.0: Does Thunar use FAM or inotify?

I know, that Thunar depends on FAM, but dependencies are not really reliable indicator of functionality (for example latest Thunar could already use inotify, and the maintainer has just overlooked the dependency).

Most likely latest Thunar still uses FAM (why not gamin?), but I just want to be sure.

If it indeed exclusively uses FAM, can FAM be replaced by gamin, and would this give any advantage?

skymt

Member

Registered: 2006-11-27

Posts: 443

Re: XFCE4.4.0: Does Thunar use FAM or inotify?

Thunar does use FAM. I've disabled it (ran into some instability) and Thunar now requires a refresh to see any changes.

augustob

Member

From: Florianópolis, Brazil

Registered: 2006-03-17

Posts: 135

Re: XFCE4.4.0: Does Thunar use FAM or inotify?

Thunar does use FAM. I've disabled it (ran into some instability) and Thunar now requires a refresh to see any changes.

Does anyone that tries to use FAM NOT run into some instability? It's an unusable piece of software, as far as I'm concerned, and it only pisses me off more that the Thunar guys are so devoted to it. Create some intra-XFCE file monitoring abstraction, but don't rely on buggy, unsupported software.

That was my rant for the day.

elasticdog

Member

From: Washington, USA

Registered: 2005-05-02

Posts: 995

Website

Re: XFCE4.4.0: Does Thunar use FAM or inotify?

Thunar does use FAM. I've disabled it (ran into some instability) and Thunar now requires a refresh to see any changes.

That's funny, I had never enabled FAM and wondered why I had to refresh to see changes in Thunar...you learn something every day

Gullible Jones

Member

Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: XFCE4.4.0: Does Thunar use FAM or inotify?

Thunar does use FAM. I've disabled it (ran into some instability) and Thunar now requires a refresh to see any changes.

Does anyone that tries to use FAM NOT run into some instability? It's an unusable piece of software, as far as I'm concerned, and it only pisses me off more that the Thunar guys are so devoted to it. Create some intra-XFCE file monitoring abstraction, but don't rely on buggy, unsupported software.

That was my rant for the day.

Basically the problem is that the Gnome people stopped developing gamin and instead stuck inotify support into gnome-vfs, and KDE went and did the same. Which, of course, is utterly stupid - gamin was the right approach, a library with support for inotify and other kernels' equivalents that could be used by any app that needed to monitor directories. I still have no idea what the rationale for abandoning gamin.

I agree with you about Thunar though, you just don't make users rely on abandonware for basic features.

Romashka

Forum Fellow

Registered: 2005-12-07

Posts: 1,054

Re: XFCE4.4.0: Does Thunar use FAM or inotify?

Basically the problem is that the Gnome people stopped developing gamin and instead stuck inotify support into gnome-vfs, and KDE went and did the same. Which, of course, is utterly stupid - gamin was the right approach, a library with support for inotify and other kernels' equivalents that could be used by any app that needed to monitor directories. I still have no idea what the rationale for abandoning gamin.

I agree with you about Thunar though, you just don't make users rely on abandonware for basic features.

There is also libinotify and inotify-tools. I don't know why Gnome & KDE use inotify directly.
In some blog entry sometimes during 4.4 development I read that Xfce devs want to eliminate FAM dependency.
I'm curious why they didn't do this before 4.4 release.

Last edited by Romashka (2007-01-28 10:34:21)

---

to live is to die

baze

Member

Registered: 2005-10-30

Posts: 393

Re: XFCE4.4.0: Does Thunar use FAM or inotify?

i asked benedikt about using inotify instead of fam/gamin once and he said that he'd stick with fam or gamin because inotify is linux only and xfce is supposed to run on *bsd and solaris too.
now i don't know if inotify is not present on those (someone once told me *bsd supported inotify) but that is what the developer of thunar told me.

btw, there has been an update some months ago to gamin while the last fam update is pretty much long time ago. the reason why gamin was dropped on arch is because jgc said gnome-vfs and kde both use inotify directly and with gamin instead of fam you'd lose network monitoring.

i still think gamin should replace fam in arch though but who am i to decide...
but well, that's still the current state of fam/gamin/inotify in arch and xfce.

xerverius

Member

From: ~

Registered: 2004-11-02

Posts: 230

Website

Re: XFCE4.4.0: Does Thunar use FAM or inotify?

Does anyone that tries to use FAM NOT run into some instability? It's an unusable piece of software, as far as I'm concerned, and it only pisses me off more that the Thunar guys are so devoted to it. Create some intra-XFCE file monitoring abstraction, but don't rely on buggy, unsupported software.

Well actually I use hal all the time and it works perfect, but that aside. Who says the Xfce people are 'devoted' to hal, I think you've made that up yourself. It's recommended to use gamin instead of hal, but because most distro don't ship with gamin (which it pretty stupid because there was a new gamin release made nov-2006) Thunar has also support for fam.

And since the developer of Thunar is a BSD user, I don't think he'll add inotify support in the near future .

baze

Member

Registered: 2005-10-30

Posts: 393

Re: XFCE4.4.0: Does Thunar use FAM or inotify?

Does anyone that tries to use FAM NOT run into some instability? It's an unusable piece of software, as far as I'm concerned, and it only pisses me off more that the Thunar guys are so devoted to it. Create some intra-XFCE file monitoring abstraction, but don't rely on buggy, unsupported software.

Well actually I use hal all the time and it works perfect, but that aside. Who says the Xfce people are 'devoted' to hal, I think you've made that up yourself. It's recommended to use gamin instead of hal, but because most distro don't ship with gamin (which it pretty stupid because there was a new gamin release made nov-2006) Thunar has also support for fam.

And since the developer of Thunar is a BSD user, I don't think he'll add inotify support in the near future .

s/hal/fam/g ?

Gullible Jones

Member

Registered: 2004-12-29

Posts: 4,863

Re: XFCE4.4.0: Does Thunar use FAM or inotify?

i asked benedikt about using inotify instead of fam/gamin once and he said that he'd stick with fam or gamin because inotify is linux only and xfce is supposed to run on *bsd and solaris too.
now i don't know if inotify is not present on those (someone once told me *bsd supported inotify) but that is what the developer of thunar told me.

btw, there has been an update some months ago to gamin while the last fam update is pretty much long time ago. the reason why gamin was dropped on arch is because jgc said gnome-vfs and kde both use inotify directly and with gamin instead of fam you'd lose network monitoring.

i still think gamin should replace fam in arch though but who am i to decide...
but well, that's still the current state of fam/gamin/inotify in arch and xfce.

Ah, nifty! FWIW, the PKGBUILD is in the AUR, so if you want it in Community go and vote for it... Which I am going to do right now.

xerverius

Member

From: ~

Registered: 2004-11-02

Posts: 230

Website

Re: XFCE4.4.0: Does Thunar use FAM or inotify?

s/hal/fam/g ?

Damn I always put those 2 together , another reason to abandon fam .