MacFUSE: New Frontiers in File Systems by Scott Knaster 03/06/2007 If you're a typical Mac programmer or user, chances are your main concern with files is reading from and writing to them, opening and saving them. You probably haven't thought much about adding support for other file systems or actually implementing your own file system from scratch—why on earth would you want to do that? Well, no matter what kind of Mac user you are, there's a new development in the somewhat arcane world of file systems that's bound to be interesting to you: MacFUSE. So what's all this fuss about file systems? A traditional file system provides a way of organizing information on your disks so that programs can have access to them. Compatibility. Note that MacFUSE is not just for programmers. Now that you have some idea why you might want to use other file systems, we can talk about how. Writing Your Own File System Let's say you're ready to add support for a new file system to Mac OS X. Have I scared you off yet? There Must Be a Better Way Globals
Taming Mac OS X File Systems Posted by Amit Singh, Mac Engineering Manager Google is a fantastic company to work for. I could cite numerous reasons why. Take the concept of "20 percent time." FUSE makes it possible to implement a very functional file system in a normal program rather than requiring a complex addition to the operating system. One of the missions of the Google Macintosh team is to contribute to the Mac community and make the Mac OS X experience better for users and developers. The MacFUSE implementation Google is releasing today includes the following components: A virtual file system (VFS) kernel extensionA special-purpose mount_fusefs programA patch to the FUSE user-space libraryA patch to the SSHFS file systemMore details on using and developing for MacFUSE are available on the project's Google Code page. Small disclaimer: Please note that MacFUSE is a complex piece of software, and it is a work in progress. Enjoy your file systems!
macfuse Please Note: This project is no longer being maintained. We cannot currently help with any lion (or any large feline) related bugs or issues. The MacFuse google group is a decent resource for finding forks/replacement projects. MacFUSE allows you to extend Mac OS X's native file handling capabilities via 3rd-party file systems. It is used as a software building block by dozens of products. As a user, installing the MacFUSE software package will let you use any 3rd-party file system written atop MacFUSE. As a developer, you can use the MacFUSE SDK to write numerous types of new file systems as regular user-mode programs. In more technical terms, MacFUSE implements a mechanism that makes it possible to implement a fully functional file system in a user-space program on Mac OS X (10.4 and above). The MacFUSE software consists of a kernel extension and various user-space libraries and tools. To see some examples of MacFUSE at work, see the videos linked on the right.