Investigate using MacFSEvents in DropBox

[cblackburn]

The Mac implementation of DropBox could be improved and simplified by using MacFSEvents, ​https://github.com/malthe/macfsevents

[jmoore]

Moved from sprint 2011-11-29 (3)

[cblackburn]

Having tested this there are several weaknesses:

• a library is built which depends on Mac OS version and Python version. This could complicate our build process.
• although it uses the same event masks as (py)inotify it uses a very reduced set (created, delete, modify and move). It doesn't distinguish directory events so extra logic needs to be added to distinguish file events from directory events.
• although its use is relatively simple it works a little differently to pyinotify so it doesn't offer an immediate way of unifying the Linux and Mac OS monitoring.
• when a new directory is created it seems to report all directories at the same level as being new. This would lead to duplicate imports without further logic.
• when a directory with contents is copied/moved into a monitored area only the directory is reported as being new (there is no immediate recursion) so extra logic would may needed to handle the notification of underlying files.

None of this is insurmountable but I'd recommend watching the development of this package rather than using it as it now is.

[cblackburn]

Josh: is it worth committing the file I used to test this even though it wouldn't be used by our existing code? Just really to keep it somewhere/have it recorded? It wouldn't be usable out-of-the-box without someone installing MacFSEvents themselves.

[jmoore]

I'd certainly at least push it to a macfsevents branch on your github, so we remember to come back to it. Up to you, really, if you want it in develop.

[jburel]

Colin and I discussed that this morning (before your comment) and Colin will push it on team instead of having an inactive branch for a long period

[cblackburn]

Pushed to team/cblackburn/macfsevents