Experimental build: File Watchers and Caching

File watchers test build. See PR #6198.

See the google group for more details: https://groups.google.com/forum/?fromgroups#!topic/brackets-dev/0siiDw5_TbQ.

Are you an expert Brackets user who likes to live dangerously? If so, we could use your help! We've been working on some major new features for the Brackets file system, like using file watchers to provide nearly instantaneous file change events, and aggressive caching of file contents. The former allows us to do things like update the file tree and search results in real time; and the latter makes find-in-files in large projects much faster.

The new code isn't quite ready yet, but it's getting close. So, before we merge it into the main branch and release it to the world, we'd like to ask for your help with testing. If you're interested, read on! But first a BIG WARNING: this is unstable and only lightly tested code. It is unlikely but conceivable that using it could result in data loss or corruption! So make sure that your backups are up to date!

If that didn't scare you off, you can install a build from here:

https://github.com/adobe/brackets/releases/tag/v0.36.0-10998

(Note that these installers will overwrite your current build. To return to safety, you must first uninstall the experimental build and then download and run an installer for the latest stable build on brackets.io.)

Once you've installed the new builds, just use Brackets as usual. Give the file watchers a try by adding or removing files within your project and watching the file tree magically update. Exercise the filesystem cache by searching through your project a few times. And if something goes wrong or feels especially slow (or fast!), just reply to this post with a summary of what happened. (Bonus points if you can paste in any errors or messages that show up in the console.) And if you have any questions about how something works (or is supposed to work), just go ahead and ask!

All the best,

-- Ian and the rest of the Brackets team