inotify back end for tail -f on linux

[shawn]

Perhaps this has already been discussed

tail -f polls and is highly inefficient when there exists event
notification such as inotify. It would be nice if this could be added in
a way that does not break any systems, even if compiled for Linux and
the Linux kernel it runs on does not have inotify. If inotify does not
work it would fall back to polling.

http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=423886

There exists a program that tries to do this but it is not fully
compatible with GNU tail:

http://distanz.ch/inotail/
http://packages.debian.org/sid/inotail
http://packages.debian.org/changelogs/pool/main/i/inotail/inotail_0.5-1/inotail.copyright

Here are the in tree docs:
http://git.kernel.org/?p=linux/kernel/git/torvalds/linux-2.6.git;a=blob;f=Documentation/filesystems/inotify.txt;h=59a919f16144df84dc6e3934dcdc22c26611a6ea;hb=d848223808c5d21e1b3cea090047e34722c6254b

Shawn