visual studio code - VSC unable to watch for file changes in this large workspace weird

Question

I just started using VSCode version 1.24.1.

After loading a folder, it shows warning

Visual Studio Code is unable to watch for file changes in this large workspace

After i check the limit as suggested on their guide, using

cat /proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_user_watches

I get 8192, while my project has only 650 files (of which 400 are inside .git)

Why does this happen? Is this a bug or am I missing something?

(Increasing the limit is clearly not the right solution.)

question from:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/50901127/vsc-unable-to-watch-for-file-changes-in-this-large-workspace-weird

Answer 1

The fact that you are out of watches does not mean that its VSCode's fault.

VSCode has for sure issues with excluding directories from watch (on linux).

But since you have counted the files yourself, the error message in this case is probably misleading and some other application has already exhausted watches.

To trace the guilty app you can use this nice script