Oleg Krupnov wrote:
> Here's a newbie question: Is it possible with MacFUSE to create a
> virtual folder without mounting an additional file system in Finder?
>
> By virtual folder I mean a fake folder that appears like a folder in
> Finder, but is actually a gateway to a directory of custom items, like
> FTP location or ZIP archive or whatever. The user would click some
> file with a special extension (e.g. ZIP), and the associated program
> would seamlessly present a virtual folder without touching the list of
> Devices in Finder. Is this possible?
> >
>   
By "fake folder" you may mean "mount point". The operating system 
creates such "fake folders" in the file system tree each time you attach 
a new file system to your computer. Just look in /Volumes for examples.

What I think you're asking is whether there is a possibility to 
associate certain container type files (zip, rar, tar...) with a helper 
application which automatically mounts these files somewhere and 
presents the user with the contents, in the same way that it works when 
you open a .dmg disk image. Did I understand you correctly?

This is not possible by simply installing MacFUSE. But it would be 
possible to create such a solution that uses MacFUSE. I have already 
done so with RARMounter ( http://hem.bredband.net/catacombae/jlrarx.html 
), which associates with .rar files and automatically mounts them, 
displaying their contents, and allowing direct access to uncompressed 
entries (the RAR format is not well documented, and the compression 
algorithms are proprietary... so that's the best I could do with a 
reasonable amount of effort). There are FUSE implementation of zip file 
systems too, so all we need is to create the mount helper application.

There are problems with the approach though. These mount points wouldn't 
persist across a reboot, and your Finder list of mount points would be 
flooded with all these mounted
.rar, .zip, etc.. file systems. (Maybe this can be avoided with some 
noping_diskarb option)

- Erik Larsson ( http://hem.bredband.net/catacombae/ )

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