> Right, I understand that the fuse doesn't support filesystems that
> files can change on it, and that this whole thing is "makeshift".

FUSE is an API. MacFUSE is a Mac OS X specific set of "programs" that
provide this API. sshfs is a user-space file system written using the
FUSE API. The sshfs binary you are using is the Mac OS X version of
sshfs.

Now, MacFUSE itself doesn't know (and in a sense, doesn't care) where
the _data_ for a file system comes from--as far as it is concerned, it
comes from user space. As I said earlier, *sshfs* (more specifically,
sftp), doesn't have a magical way to know that something changed on
the "server". (Remember that not all MacFUSE file systems will have
"servers"). A makeshift way sshfs provides to accommodate "remote
changes" is a timeout on cached information. A makeshift way MacFUSE
provides to accommodate file systems like sshfs is to enable/disable
buffer caching altogether. Normal (in-kernel) Mac OS X file systems
don't face many of these "issues", partly because they are well
defined at the time they are written: MacFUSE's goal is to enable
*arbitrary* file systems, so it can't know everything about every file
system.

In short, if one really wants, one could write an NFS or AFP
implementation atop MacFUSE. (In fact, there is an AFP
implementation.) One could write file systems that _nicely_ supports
files "changing on them" (whatever that means). It's just that sshfs
isn't that file system.

> Maybe I don't understand how fuse caching things.  I don't expect
> sshfs/fuse to immediately detect changes; nor do I need it to.  But
> what I don't understand is when sshfs cache is set to the default of
> 20 seconds, why do I keep seeing the old version minutes after a new
> version was created?

Because there isn't just one cache. There are multiple caches in
effect, both at the user and kernel level. Not all of these caches
have (or should have) timeouts.

Amit


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