Makefile.PL                     | 2 +-
 ci/deps.perl                    | 5 ++---
 lib/PublicInbox/WatchMaildir.pm | 3 ++-

diff --git a/Makefile.PL b/Makefile.PL
index 6b20385a56838708719ad44cea75ed3c2e523de9..94ec16c65fb16bc3c0433fe85e2b738e7c655a08 100644
--- a/Makefile.PL
+++ b/Makefile.PL
@@ -132,7 +132,7 @@ 		# 'Plack' => 0,
 
 		# Filesys::Notify::Simple is pulled in by Plack, but also
 		# needed by public-inbox-watch (for now)
-		'Filesys::Notify::Simple' => 0,
+		# 'Filesys::Notify::Simple' => 0,
 
 		# TODO: this should really be made optional...
 		'URI::Escape' => 0,
diff --git a/ci/deps.perl b/ci/deps.perl
index 08722e1c41902275704a85b97f99be258192831d..93cc5d25623ad19cd169fb9ed5a221bf5f571a56 100755
--- a/ci/deps.perl
+++ b/ci/deps.perl
@@ -14,8 +14,7 @@
 # package profiles
 my $profiles = {
 	# the smallest possible profile for testing
-	# TODO: trim this, Plack pulls in Filesys::Notify::Simple,
-	# and we don't need that for mda-only installs
+	# TODO: trim URI::Escape from this, maybe
 	essential => [ qw(
 		git
 		perl
@@ -26,7 +25,6 @@ 		Email::MIME
 		Email::MIME::ContentType
 		Encode
 		ExtUtils::MakeMaker
-		Filesys::Notify::Simple
 		URI::Escape
 		), @test_essential ],
 
@@ -36,6 +34,7 @@ 		Date::Parse
 		BSD::Resource
 		DBD::SQLite
 		DBI
+		Filesys::Notify::Simple
 		IO::Compress::Gzip
 		Inline::C
 		Net::Server
diff --git a/lib/PublicInbox/WatchMaildir.pm b/lib/PublicInbox/WatchMaildir.pm
index dfb987e85dd5718648223206e13434b36ff5ca61..cf1dfa7656704bc3dcdeb637dd4a6e522a1fd4b3 100644
--- a/lib/PublicInbox/WatchMaildir.pm
+++ b/lib/PublicInbox/WatchMaildir.pm
@@ -202,7 +202,8 @@ 	my $cb = sub { _try_fsn_paths($self, $re, \@_) };
 
 	# lazy load here, we may support watching via IMAP IDLE
 	# in the future...
-	require Filesys::Notify::Simple;
+	eval { require Filesys::Notify::Simple } or
+		die "Filesys::Notify::Simple is currently required for $0\n";
 	my $fsn = Filesys::Notify::Simple->new([@{$self->{mdir}}, $scandir]);
 	$fsn->wait($cb) until $self->{quit};
 }