[AVFS] Re: [Lufs-users] avfs, ovlfs, lufs - cooperation for Linux virtual filesystems

Hello Massimiliano,

Never heard of ovlfs, but that seems even more dead than the other two.

LUFS .. is pretty much stable now. There are various filesystems 
provided with it, which are working fine. I mostly use locasefs ( which 
I contributed to the project ) and sshfs ( on which I'm sponsoring 
further developements atm ).

I have CVS write to the LUFS repository, but the main LUFS author ( 
Florin Malita ) hasn't shown any sign of activity in several months. To 
note that he was never very responsive before that .. but since there 
are no major bugs in the current release, it's not a real problem.

Then there is AVF / FUSE .. since I have performance problems with 
sshfs, I've been looking for replacement solutions .. and looked at AVF 
.. well .. I'm really not convinced. Here are my opinions:

- The FUSE design may be 'easier' on developers that LUFS. It's easier 
to run your code through the debugger and other things.

- AVF has more developer activity ( not that it changes anything to the 
quality and number of filesystems, see below )

- Now the main problem, is that AVF/FUSE doesn't provide many ( if any ) 
filesystems by itself. The docs have links to filesystems implemented by 
others using AVF. Namely, I looked at the dav FS, and at the cache FS ( 
which I had written for LUFS in the past ). The major issue there is 
that it's very annoying for users to have to track down the various 
filesystems all over, and that in most cases those filesystems are no 
longer maintained / won't compile against the current AVF source. I 
reported several issues to the dav FS and cache FS authors and never got 
a reply.

- FUSE also has LUFIS, which is supposed to use LUFS filesystem modules. 
It doesn't work. Requires an old version of LUFS, and even then it's not 
fully compatible with the LUFS modules. And it *also* have the same 
problem as other AVF filesystem. It's a pita to have to compile both AVF 
and LUFS to use them.

What could be done?

I think the solution can only come from AVF at this point. All the 
filesystems built around FUSE should be maintained directly in the FUSE 
source tree to provide a *coherent* filesystem offer. Being an LUFS 
developer, I'd offer my help on migrating / integrating the LUFS 
filesystems. I think anyone who contributes a filesystem to AVF should 
be strongly encouraged to take an active part to the project and 
maintain their filesystem in the main AVF tree. It would give a better 
visibility to the project.

TTimo

Massimiliano Ghilardi wrote:

>Hello to all the people in the three mailing lists
>(avf-user, ovlfs-user, lufs-users)
>
>my name is Massimiliano Ghilardi and I have used avfs for some time.
>
>I searched the web (and Sourceforge in particular) for Linux virtual filesystem
>projects, and I found also the other two: ovlfs and lufs.
>
>I have seen technical differences among them, yet all the three projects
>share very similar goals.
>
>I have two questions:
>
>1. did any of you already know about the others?
>
>2. do you think it would be a good idea to cooperate one another?
>
>
>I have really appreciated avfs when I used it, and I would like to
>see further features added to it (replicating fs, shadowing and
>copy-on-write, ...), which some of the other projects already have.
>
>I would like Linux virtual filesystems to become something standard,
>but being a free software writer myself, I see the current fragmentation
>on Linux virtual filesystems as quite a waste...
>
>
>Regards,
>
>
>                        Massimiliano Ghilardi
>
>
>
>
>
>
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