GIT-FSMONITOR--DAEMON(1) Git Manual GIT-FSMONITOR--DAEMON(1)

NAME

git-fsmonitor--daemon - A Built-in Filesystem Monitor

SYNOPSIS

git fsmonitor--daemon start
git fsmonitor--daemon run
git fsmonitor--daemon stop
git fsmonitor--daemon status

DESCRIPTION

A daemon to watch the working directory for file and directory
changes using platform-specific filesystem notification facilities.

This daemon communicates directly with commands like git status using
the simple IPC[1] interface instead of the slower githooks(5)
interface.

This daemon is built into Git so that no third-party tools are
required.

OPTIONS

start
Starts a daemon in the background.

run
Runs a daemon in the foreground.

stop
Stops the daemon running in the current working directory, if
present.

status
Exits with zero status if a daemon is watching the current
working directory.

REMARKS

This daemon is a long running process used to watch a single working
directory and maintain a list of the recently changed files and
directories. Performance of commands such as git status can be
increased if they just ask for a summary of changes to the working
directory and can avoid scanning the disk.

When core.fsmonitor is set to true (see git-config(1)) commands, such
as git status, will ask the daemon for changes and automatically
start it (if necessary).

For more information see the "File System Monitor" section in git-
update-index(1).

CAVEATS

The fsmonitor daemon does not currently know about submodules and
does not know to filter out filesystem events that happen within a
submodule. If fsmonitor daemon is watching a super repo and a file is
modified within the working directory of a submodule, it will report
the change (as happening against the super repo). However, the client
will properly ignore these extra events, so performance may be
affected but it will not cause an incorrect result.

By default, the fsmonitor daemon refuses to work with network-mounted
repositories; this may be overridden by setting fsmonitor.allowRemote
to true. Note, however, that the fsmonitor daemon is not guaranteed
to work correctly with all network-mounted repositories, so such use
is considered experimental.

On Mac OS, the inter-process communication (IPC) between various Git
commands and the fsmonitor daemon is done via a Unix domain socket
(UDS) -- a special type of file -- which is supported by native Mac
OS filesystems, but not on network-mounted filesystems, NTFS, or
FAT32. Other filesystems may or may not have the needed support; the
fsmonitor daemon is not guaranteed to work with these filesystems and
such use is considered experimental.

By default, the socket is created in the .git directory. However, if
the .git directory is on a network-mounted filesystem, it will
instead be created at $HOME/.git-fsmonitor-* unless $HOME itself is
on a network-mounted filesystem, in which case you must set the
configuration variable fsmonitor.socketDir to the path of a directory
on a Mac OS native filesystem in which to create the socket file.

If none of the above directories (.git, $HOME, or
fsmonitor.socketDir) is on a native Mac OS file filesystem the
fsmonitor daemon will report an error that will cause the daemon and
the currently running command to exit.

CONFIGURATION

Everything below this line in this section is selectively included
from the git-config(1) documentation. The content is the same as
what's found there:

fsmonitor.allowRemote
By default, the fsmonitor daemon refuses to work with
network-mounted repositories. Setting fsmonitor.allowRemote to
true overrides this behavior. Only respected when core.fsmonitor
is set to true.

fsmonitor.socketDir
This Mac OS-specific option, if set, specifies the directory in
which to create the Unix domain socket used for communication
between the fsmonitor daemon and various Git commands. The
directory must reside on a native Mac OS filesystem. Only
respected when core.fsmonitor is set to true.

GIT

Part of the git(1) suite

NOTES

1. simple IPC
git-htmldocs/technical/api-simple-ipc.html

Git 2.48.1 2025-01-13 GIT-FSMONITOR--DAEMON(1)