Opening a file on macOS triggers a 'change' event

[sebastianrath]

Describe the bug

A clear and concise description of what the bug is.

Versions (please complete the following information):

• Chokidar version 3.5.2
• Node version 12.18.1
• OS version: macOS 12.0.1

Description:

#762 fixes an issue to ignore updates for the access time caused by read operations. I am on macOS and opening a text file still triggers a 'change' event.

To Reproduce:

A double click on a newly created text file updates the following entries (extracted by mdls):

The options for chokidar are these:

{
      ignored: /(^|[/\\])\../, // ignore dotfiles
      depth: 0,
      usePolling: false,
      alwaysStat: true,
      followSymlinks: false,
      ignorePermissionErrors : true,
      ignoreInitial: true,
      cwd: this.cwd,
      awaitWriteFinish : {
        stabilityThreshold: 500,
        pollInterval: 250
      }

[poppa]

We run in to this problem as well.

One interesting note though: This is in an Electron app, and when run in "dev" mode - that is from the Git repo via the bundled Electron binary in node_modules - the problem occurs. In this case cwd in the app is /path/to/git-repo/from-where-we-launched.

When the app is run as a packaged app - i.e. Our Application.app - the problem does NOT occur. In this case cwd is always / regardless from where the app was launched.

Another note: We are watching specific files and no directories.

[poppa]

Okey, so on MacOS when Chokidar is configured with usePolling: false, MacOS native FSEvents is used, as we want, in fsevent-handler.js - rather than nodefs-handler.js - which doesn't seem to track any previous file stat so no atime comparison is being made as described/fixed in #762.

I don't personally have time atm to look deeper into this, but this is the gist of it.

Temporary solution 1: Use polling

• I have not idea what implications this has, if any, on memory and/or CPU consumption though.

Temporary solution 2: Create a thin wrapper yourself in your project that tracks previous stat and does the atime comparison "manually".

[stoefln]

Same problem here