chokidar: Gradually slower responsiveness to change events on Windows

I use it with gulp and have some time leaking. Looks like the problem in globs. Also on a bigger project, where I found this problem, for nested files creates nested.css-jds43J.TMP like files for a few miliseconds. Saw it in sublime sidebar

var gulp = require('gulp');
var chokidar = require('chokidar');

gulp.task('build', function () {
    return gulp.src('src/main.css')
        .pipe(gulp.dest('dist'));
});

gulp.task('dev', function () {
    chokidar.watch('src/**/*.css')
    .on('change', function () {
        gulp.start('build');
    })
})

File structure

src/main.css
src/include/nested.css

Log

[13:07:10] Starting 'dev'...
[13:07:10] Finished 'dev' after 4.38 ms
// A few changes in a row and periodical changes in main.css
[13:07:11] Starting 'build'...
[13:07:11] Finished 'build' after 54 ms
[13:07:11] Starting 'build'...
[13:07:11] Finished 'build' after 27 ms
[13:07:11] Starting 'build'...
[13:07:11] Finished 'build' after 19 ms
[13:07:12] Starting 'build'...
[13:07:12] Finished 'build' after 17 ms
[13:07:12] Starting 'build'...
[13:07:12] Finished 'build' after 23 ms
[13:07:14] Starting 'build'...
[13:07:14] Finished 'build' after 26 ms
[13:07:14] Starting 'build'...
[13:07:14] Finished 'build' after 10 ms
[13:07:14] Starting 'build'...
[13:07:14] Finished 'build' after 19 ms
// Periodical changes in nested.css
[13:07:17] Starting 'build'...
[13:07:18] Finished 'build' after 295 ms
[13:07:19] Starting 'build'...
[13:07:19] Finished 'build' after 321 ms
[13:07:20] Starting 'build'...
[13:07:20] Finished 'build' after 305 ms
[13:07:21] Starting 'build'...
[13:07:22] Finished 'build' after 341 ms
[13:07:24] Starting 'build'...
[13:07:24] Finished 'build' after 387 ms
[13:07:26] Starting 'build'...
[13:07:26] Finished 'build' after 336 ms
[13:07:29] Starting 'build'...
[13:07:29] Finished 'build' after 361 ms
[13:07:31] Starting 'build'...
[13:07:31] Finished 'build' after 397 ms
[13:07:34] Starting 'build'...
[13:07:34] Finished 'build' after 451 ms
[13:07:36] Starting 'build'...
[13:07:37] Finished 'build' after 368 ms
[13:07:38] Starting 'build'...
[13:07:38] Finished 'build' after 425 ms
[13:07:40] Starting 'build'...
[13:07:41] Finished 'build' after 464 ms
[13:07:43] Starting 'build'...
[13:07:43] Finished 'build' after 497 ms
[13:07:45] Starting 'build'...
[13:07:45] Finished 'build' after 429 ms
[13:07:47] Starting 'build'...
[13:07:47] Finished 'build' after 491 ms
[13:07:49] Starting 'build'...
[13:07:49] Finished 'build' after 540 ms
// A few changes in a row in nested.css
[13:07:52] Starting 'build'...
[13:07:55] Finished 'build' after 3.04 s
// Again periodical changes
[13:15:57] Starting 'build'...
[13:15:58] Finished 'build' after 669 ms
[13:15:59] Starting 'build'...
[13:16:00] Finished 'build' after 681 ms
[13:16:03] Starting 'build'...
[13:16:03] Finished 'build' after 725 ms
// Changes in main.css
[13:16:06] Starting 'build'...
[13:16:06] Finished 'build' after 23 ms
[13:16:07] Starting 'build'...
[13:16:07] Finished 'build' after 9.2 ms
[13:16:07] Starting 'build'...
[13:16:07] Finished 'build' after 17 ms

About this issue

Original URL
State: closed
Created 9 years ago
Reactions: 2
Comments: 32 (1 by maintainers)

Most upvoted comments

@JustMaier, tried node 8.9.0 - same result for me. Guess we stuck with polling.

anwerso on Nov 3, 2017

Update to Chokidar v3, it should resolve this.

paulmillr on Aug 13, 2019

I’m getting this same problem with Gulp 4 using the following gulp file.

let gulp = require('gulp');
let rename = require('gulp-rename');

function styles() {
    return gulp.src('src/**/*.scss')
        //Issue happens with or without this rename plugin
        .pipe(rename({extname: '.test'}))
        //Issue only happens if destination directory is same as source directory
        .pipe(gulp.dest('src'));
}

gulp.task('watch', function() {
    //only happens if there is a glob here
    gulp.watch('src/**/test.html', styles);
});

Running gulp watch outputs:

If I change the watch statement to use polling the issue doesn’t occur

gulp.watch('src/**/test.html', {usePolling: true}, styles);

Attached is a minimal app that reproduces the issue gulp-issue.zip

I am using the following versions node: v7.2.0 npm: 3.10.9 OS: Windows 10 Gulp CLI: 1.2.2 Local Gulp: 4.0.0-alpha.2

robianmcd on Jan 9, 2017