Multiplatform event handling module?

rastoboy has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

Is there a good, well used, multiplatform event detection module available? I'd like to be informed when a new file shows up in a particular directory. The idea of polling just seems *wrong* somehow. My searches of cpan have revealed multiple options, but I just don't know the good from the bad. My main platform is Linux, so something that works very well there would be ideal, but it would also be nice if it could be used on FreeBSD or OSX. Any input would be greatly appreciated!

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Re: Multiplatform event handling module? by thunders (Priest) on Aug 12, 2009 at 03:13 UTC
For linux there is Linux::Inotify2 it interfaces with a kernel-level event notification subsystem. A potential multiplatform solution is File::Monitor a quick look at that module suggests you need to call a scan() method manually for polling.	[reply]
Re^2: Multiplatform event handling module? by thunders (Priest) on Aug 12, 2009 at 03:24 UTC
I know you didn't mention Win32, but this looks like an equivalent mechanism on windows. I don't think there's a direct perl interface to this, though it should be fairly straightforward to implement.	[reply]
Re^3: Multiplatform event handling module? by Anonymous Monk on Aug 12, 2009 at 04:13 UTC
Win32::ChangeNotify, Win32::FileNotify, File::ChangeNotify	[reply]
Re: Multiplatform event handling module? by thunders (Priest) on Aug 12, 2009 at 14:30 UTC
I looked into BSD and OSX and it looks like kqueue is the common way to do event notifications. There is a thin wrapper around this utility called IO::KQueue on cpan. Here is some C source code I found which uses kqueue and kevent for directory monitoring, hopefully that would be adaptable. MacOSX also recently added FSEvents but that's only available from 10.5(Leopard) on.	[reply]
Re: Multiplatform event handling module? by pileofrogs (Priest) on Aug 12, 2009 at 17:10 UTC
I have no idea if POE is appropriate or not, but you may want to have a look at it. It's all about portable event handling. I've never used it, but I've been peering at it from time to time. --Pileofrogs	[reply]
Re^2: Multiplatform event handling module? by rastoboy (Monk) on Aug 18, 2009 at 05:28 UTC
Thanks a bunch y'all! That POE looks quite promising--I'll post a followup with my findings after trying all your suggestions.	[reply]