MACFUSE: Why?

[gunug]

A month or so ago I was almost buried in an attempt to "fix" the interface between MAC OS 10.5 and a generic Linux/Samba file server we were using to store files for Journalism and Graphics Arts classes in the high schools.  The network guy, who doesn't really want to learn much about MAC's, moved the server from one Linux system to a different one and suddenly nobody could access things anymore.  There were good reasons to move it to the newer version of SUSE Linux so I jumped in and tried to see what headway I could make from the MAC User side of things.  It finally amounted to what versions of libraries he was using so the things I thought to try didn't help (or not very much).  Along the way I came across MACFuse:

QUOTE

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. The content of these file systems can come from anywhere: from  the local disk, from across the network, from memory, or any other  combination of sources. Writing a file system using MacFUSE is orders of  magnitude easier and quicker than the traditional approach of writing  in-kernel file systems. Since MacFUSE file systems are regular  applications (as opposed to kernel extensions), you have just as much  flexibility and choice in programming tools, debuggers, and libraries as  you have if you were developing standard Mac OS X applications.

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). It provides multiple APIs, one of  which is a  superset of the FUSE (File-system in USEr space) API that  originated on Linux. Therefore, many existing FUSE file systems become  readily usable on Mac OS X.

http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/

I'm kind of seeing this as a concept only until this morning when I saw the iTunesFS on Versiontracker which allows you to mount the "iTunes Music Library.xml as a file system."  Not sure how this would help except as a mechanism to move or back up your library.  Anyone else have any thoughts about the utility of something like this?

[Paddy]

My only experience of MacFuse was as part of the NTFS-3G package allowing my Mac to read and write to an NTFS formatted external drive. Worked very nicely.

Think your quote re: iTunesFS is a little off, John. (Think you maybe meant "Finder", not "file system"?

From TUAW:

QUOTE

iTunesFS: your music in Finder
by Brett Terpstra (RSS feed) on Jan 2nd 2008 at 10:30AM
iTunesFS is a MacFUSE filesystem, written by Marcus Müller, that lets you browse your iTunes music library and playlists from the finder. It's a great example of MacFUSE being put to use, and the source code is available (via Subversion) for others to learn from.

iTunesFS allows you to manage the songs in your library directly. "But I can drag and drop files right from iTunes," you say. Not from your iPod(s), you can't. iTunesFS detects iPods, and allows for direct control over the music contents. It also offers a view of your playlists with sequentially numbered filenames to preserve playlist order. If you're handy with Terminal, it's a simple task to customize the formatting of the naming scheme as well.

iTunesFS requires MacFUSE, available at Google Code.

Could be useful, if you need that extra level of control.

[gunug]

Paddy - Versiontracker wrote this:

QUOTE

Product Description:
iTunesFS allows you to mount the "iTunes Music Library.xml" file as a file system, using the excellent MacFUSE (http://code.google.com/p/macfuse/). All playlists are exposed as directories, with their respective entries. Order of tracks within the playlists is maintained by prefixing the tracks with their playlist index.

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/32542

Which as you note is probably not strictly correct.  I'm just wondering, and will try to figure it out on my Powerbook G4 this weekend (because it has very little music in the iTunes Library), just what the advantages and disadvantages of mounting the Library as a file system might be.

[gunug]

What I saw after I did this:



I'm not sure why I could only read this file at this time, why it showed up on the desktop, and why it "seems" to have gone away.  But it seems to have worked alright in principal!

[Xairbusdriver]

You mean it's already tornado season in Kansas, Dorothy?!!!

[gunug]

I know we've had funnel clouds out in Kansas in March; the picture is from a NYTimes article about an art show of works by the people who worked as guards in the art museum and I think it was called "Over the Rainbow."

[Xairbusdriver]

OK, I read your first comment too fast! I thought it said something about the first thing you saw after you installed some software...I thought you meant what you saw when you looked out the window! I kew it wasn't your house. Still...