Completely agree. That is why having built a tool similar to this one, I'm not even linking to it. The complexity involved in working around the OS limitations

Completely agree. That is why having built a tool similar to this one, I'm not even linking to it. The complexity involved in working around the OS limitations is maddening and convinced me that it would be better to think of a different approach to writing software that wouldn't require monitoring files to achieve the fast feedback loop that these tools are designed to facilitate. The magic file approach described by kevincox below is probably the best way to get > 95% of the benefit with < 1% of the work.