What are the performance and reliability implications of watching too many files?
In Facebook's Watchman application, somewhere in the docs it says this : Most systems have a finite limit on the number of directories that can be watched effectively; when that limit is exceeded the performance and reliability of filesystem watching is degraded, sometimes to the point that it ceases to function. This seems vague to me. Before it "ceases to function", what exactly can I expect to happen if I start watching too many files? And are we talking 100 files, 1,000 files, 100,000 files..? (I realise this number will vary on different systems, but some rough idea of a sensible limit