fileschanged.
(from the info manual)
The fileschanged utility is a FAM (File Alteration Monitor) client. From the command-line it monitors sets of files and shows you when they change. You can use fileschanged in shell scripts to take action when monitored files become altered. In it's simplest form, you can give fileschanged filenames to monitor from stdin, and it will report when those files have changed via stdout. You can stop fileschanged from monitoring files by pressing CTRL-C. In a more complex usage, fileschanged can monitor command-line specified files recursively, while following symbolic links, while staying on the current filesystem, and reporting deleted files as well as created and changed files that haven't been written to for 2 seconds. This software is protected by the GNU General Public License, so users are free to share and change it.
notes to my future self on how to build packages:
to build a debian package:
make sure you have cdbs, devscripts installed.
make dist
cp fileschanged-{version}.tar.gz /tmp
cd /tmp
tar -zxvf fileschanged-{version}
cd into the top level source directory.
debuild
to build a redhat package:
make sure you have rpmbuild installed.
make dist
mkdir ~/play/rpmbuild/SOURCES/fileschanged-{version}
cp fileschanged-{version}.tar.gz ~/play/rpmbuild/SOURCES/fileschanged-{version}
tar -zxvf fileschanged-{version}
cd into the top level source directory
./configure
rpmbuild -ba --sign redhat/fileschanged.spec