Dependencies

• Linux Kernel >= 2.6.13
• Python (CPython) >= 2.4
• Libc >= 2.4
• ctypes module is  part of standard library since Python 2.5 and can be installed on Python 2.4 through  this module
• [optional]  Epydoc (only needed for extracting docstrings and regenerate documentation)

Install Pyinotify on Python 2.4+

1. Make sure "Easy Install" is installed:

      wget http://peak.telecommunity.com/dist/ez_setup.py
      sudo python ez_setup.py
   

2. Install pyinotify:

      sudo easy_install pyinotify
   

3. Check pyinotify is working alright [run pyinotify from command line and watch /tmp (default watched directory)]

      python -m pyinotify -v
   

Install Pyinotify on Python 3.x

Python 3 brings lot of changes it currently seems impossible to maintain a single code for all Python versions >= 2.4. If you intend to use Pyinotify with Python versions >= 3.0 then you should proceed like this:

1. Download  Pyinotify 0.8.9+ or a  snapshot version
2. Uncompress it, cd to its root directory then for instance assuming your target Python interpreter is Python3.1 type:

      sudo python3.1 setup.py install 
   

Generate Documentation

You can browse the documentation online or you can generate it directly from the source code with  Epydoc:

1. Install a recent version of Epydoc (package python-epydoc on Debian/Ubuntu systems)
2. Run this command:

      make doc
   

3. It should have generated a bunch of html files under docstrings/