Module StartWatcher 

StartWatcher

File: Indexing/Background/StartWatcher.rs

Role in Air Architecture

Provides background task management for the File Indexer service, handling file watching startup and periodic indexing tasks.

Primary Responsibility

Start and manage background file watcher and periodic indexing tasks for the indexing service.

Secondary Responsibilities

• File watcher initialization and lifecycle management
• Periodic background re-indexing
• Watcher event debouncing
• Background task cleanup

Dependencies

External Crates:

• notify - File system watching
• tokio - Async runtime for background tasks

Internal Modules:

• crate::Result - Error handling type
• crate::AirError - Error types
• crate::ApplicationState::ApplicationState - Application state
• super::super::FileIndexer - Main file indexer
• super::WatchFile - File watching operations

Dependents

• Indexing::mod::FileIndexer - Main file indexer implementation

VSCode Pattern Reference

Inspired by VSCode’s background services in src/vs/workbench/services/search/common/

Security Considerations

• Path validation before watching
• Watch path limits enforcement
• Permission checking on watch paths

Performance Considerations

• Event debouncing prevents excessive re-indexing
• Parallel processing of file changes
• Efficient background task scheduling

Error Handling Strategy

Background tasks log errors and continue running, ensuring temporary failures don’t stop the indexing service.

Thread Safety

Background tasks use Arc for shared state and async/await for safe concurrent operations.

Structs

BackgroundIndexerContext

Background indexer context containing shared state

WatcherStatus

Watcher status information

Functions

GetWatcherStatus

Get watcher status

StartAll

Start all background components (watcher and tasks)

StartBackgroundTasks

Start background tasks for periodic indexing

StartDebounceProcessor

Start the debounce processor task

StartFileWatcher

Start file watcher for incremental indexing

StopAll

Stop all background components

StopBackgroundTasks

Stop background tasks

StopFileWatcher

Stop file watcher