Using inotify in Go for Configuration File Hot Reload

In this article we introduce Linux inotify, its supported events, and how to use it in Go to implement configuration file hot‑reload.

Inotify, added in Linux kernel 2.6.13, provides inode‑based monitoring of file system changes such as access, modify, create, delete, and move, and can be used with select , poll , or epoll .

Common inotify events (IN_ACCESS, IN_ATTRIB, IN_CLOSE_WRITE, IN_CLOSE_NOWRITE, IN_CREATE, IN_DELETE, IN_DELETE_SELF, IN_MODIFY, IN_MOVE_SELF, IN_MOVED_FROM, IN_MOVED_TO, IN_ALL_EVENTS, IN_OPEN, IN_CLOSE, IN_MOVE) are listed with brief descriptions.

Using the Go package golang.org/x/sys/unix we initialize inotify with InotifyInit() , add a watch on the configuration file via InotifyAddWatch() (watching for IN_CLOSE_WRITE ), and read events in a goroutine using unix.Read() , forwarding them to an events channel.

The article provides a simple Go demo (shown as images) and suggests wrapping the logic into a reusable Watcher struct, with links to open‑source implementations such as watcher.go , goinbox/inotify , and fsnotify for cross‑platform monitoring.

Finally, it notes that inotify is Linux‑only; macOS uses FSEvents and Windows uses FindFirstChangeNotificationA, and recommends fsnotify for cross‑platform needs.