Visual Studio Code: Unable to watch for file changes. Why?

Question

I often get the "Visual Studio Code is unable to watch for file changes in this large workspace" -error and I can't figure out why.

Visual Studio Code (Linux): 1.24.1

My exclude setting is:

"files.watcherExclude": {
    "**/.git/objects/**": true,
    "**/.git/subtree-cache/**": true,
    "**/node_modules/*/**": true,
    "**/.svn/**": true,
    "**/dist/**": true,
    "**/dist-prod/**":true
}

The structure of the project is:

angular.json
/dist
/dist-prod
/e2e
ngsw-config.json
/node_modules
package.json
package-lock.json
proxy.conf.json
README.md
/src
tsconfig.json
tslint.json
xliffmerge.json
.editorconfig
.gitignore
/.svn

/src contains only 167 files and folders. I suspect that node_modules is not really excluded. But I can't know for sure. Is my settings correct?

The problem goes away after VSC is restarted, but it always comes back after a while...

Answer 1

you've to increase the limit. Follow the below procedure:

1. Check the current limit cat /proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_user_watches
2. edit sysctl.conf file in vim editor sudo vim /etc/sysctl.conf
3. Add this line at bottom fs.inotify.max_user_watches=524288
4. save it (esc) :wq!
5. To load the change sudo sysctl -p
6. now check again cat /proc/sys/fs/inotify/max_user_watches

if the count is same, execute the following command

echo fs.inotify.max_user_watches=524288 | sudo tee -a /etc/sysctl.conf && sudo sysctl -p

For more details

Happy coding :)