fuse

[Mark Geisert]

Replying to myself...

Mark Geisert wrote:
> Hi Thomas,
> 
> Thomas Wolff wrote:
>> What became of the winfsp-fuse project discussed in July 2016?
>> I'd like to be able to use ftpfs or sshfs in cygwin.
> 
> Integration of the project into Cygwin stalled around that time, or was it 2018? 
[...]
> I would love to have somebody interested in trying out FUSE on Cygwin.  If you 
> require a cygfuse package I guess the first step for that would be for me to 
> reissue the ITP and make the package real.  Another alternative would be for you 
> to build from the Github repo https://github.com/mgeisert/cygfuse if you're 
> feeling adventurous.

Our fuse package as it stands is not ready for use.  When I last looked at it 
years ago I was too new to both FUSE and project porting to understand what was 
missing.  Currently it's a source package that supplies a glue layer for Cygwin 
apps to make use of WinFSP, a Windows FUSE driver.  It also supplies source for a 
Cygwin sshfs app that demonstrates correct operation of WinFSP via Cygwin.

I've now looked at and installed the most recent WinFSP.  The Cygwin glue layer 
works as well as it always had.  But something is missing: integration with the 
usual shell file manipulation commands.  For example, one can't 'cd' into the 
directory on which a foreign file system has been loaded.  That seems like a major 
issue unless I'm misunderstanding things.

Let me reach out to the WinFSP folks and see if I'm doing something wrong or if 
there's additional work to be done on the Cygwin side.  In any case the project 
needs some smartening up.  I plan to rename it FUSE for the upcoming ITP, to avoid 
name conflict with libfuse* common on Linux.

I see that 'mtr' is another Cygwin package that makes use of a Windows driver via 
libpcap.  Maybe I can use mtr.cygport etc as a guide; I'm unsure whether a Cygwin 
package should be including Windows drivers.
Thanks for reading; advice welcome,

..mark