fs.watch on Windows 7: Renaming a file does not emit event for original path

[jorangreef]

On Mac, using fs.watch on a directory, and then renaming a file in that directory, will emit two events, one for the file which was "deleted" and one for the file which was "created". Combining these two events later by comparing content can be used to detect renames.

But on Windows, no event is emitted for the original path. Is there no way to modify the usage of ReadDirectoryChangesW to get an event when the original path is removed or renamed to something else?

[bnoordhuis]

It may be that libuv drops FILE_ACTION_RENAMED_OLD_NAME events. Do you get a 'rename' event with a null filename?

[jorangreef]

Thanks Ben.

Yes, when renaming "a.txt" to "b.txt" I get the following events from fs.watch on Windows:

rename null
rename b.txt
change b.txt

Subsequently deleting "b.txt" just gives:

rename null

[bnoordhuis]

Right, the null rename event is the FILE_ACTION_RENAMED_OLD_NAME event. I'm not sure why the filename is filtered out but it's not for feature parity with inotify. Should be easy to fix in libuv.

/cc @indutny or @saghul

[jorangreef]

Thanks, that would be great.

[saghul]

@jorangreef Can you open an issue on libuv about this and link back here? Extra karma if you can work on a patch ;-)

[jorangreef]

Thanks @saghul joyent/libuv#1479