OS X install instructions recommend ludicrous maxfiles setting about watchman

[wez]

Now that we're using fsevents we should revise this advice in any case, but I wouldn't call them outrageous.

FWIW, I'm skeptical that using the system with those suggested settings would cause a real issue; daemonizing should never be a hot path in any system interested in performance (meaning, you shouldn't need to do it very often at all), and neither should fork().

Can you provide an example of where this is actively harmful?

[ulope]

Yes, sorry, I should have included examples in the initial report.

For me there were two cases where performance suffered:

1. PyCharm (a Python IDE made by JetBrains). Specifically the "Project Interpreter" settings dialog (which scans for installed Python interpreters / environments and apparently forks off to external tools several times) got nearly unusable (~40s lag between UI updates). I've opened an issue with them as well: http://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/PY-13675
2. An in-house Python software where daemon startup suddenly took 15 seconds instead of the normal < 1s.

[wez]

Thanks for reporting this; I've revised the docs