#1034122 feh: excessively noisy and unclear if inotify_init() fails

Package:
feh
Source:
feh
Description:
imlib2 based image viewer
Submitter:
Michael Gold
Date:
2023-04-09 17:21:03 UTC
Severity:
normal
#1034122#5
Date:
2023-04-09 17:18:01 UTC
From:
To:
Dear Maintainer,

feh prints some warnings to stderr if inotify_init() fails:
	feh WARNING: inotify_init failed: Too many open files
	feh WARNING: Disabling inotify-based auto-reload

I reported a related crash here:
https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=1034121
But I consider the warnings to be problematic too.

A program shouldn't print a warning relating to an optional feature that
I did not specifically enable, based on a function that must be expected
to "randomly" fail (due to its reliance on an extremely limited resource
shared with unrelated programs: by default, each user has a limit of 128
inotify instances).

It is also unclear from the text whether auto-reloading was disabled, or
remains operational via some non-inotify fallback.  The program's manual
page is similarly ambiguous.  I don't see any fallback in the code.

- Michael