On Tue, Mar 10, 2009 at 11:44 AM, estaweno <[email protected]> wrote: > > I still don't get what MacFuse does?
I may get some details wrongs, but hopefully the gist of this is mostly correct. Back in the Dark Ages, getting a kernel to recognize/read/write a different type of filesystem required access to kernel source code and writing code that ran with kernel-level privileges. Writing code that runs with kernel-level privileges is not easy to do well, and it's very easy to make a system unstable or slow. FUSE--and MacFUSE, which is the OS X port of FUSE--is a two-part item: 1. a kernel extension which runs with kernel-level privileges and calls out to 2. a library through which user code--which runs with user-level privileges--links The user code implements read/write of a non-native filesystem. Thus, no longer must filesystem development be the domain of kernel developers. A FUSE filesystem implementer must still be a savvy, smart, judicious developer, but s/he need not work at the kernel level. Another benefit of this is that filesystem need not be limited to being implemented just in C/C++ (which is typically the kernel implementation languages); the library (#2 above) can be implemented in higher-level scripting languages such as python. Hope this helps, -cj --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "MacFUSE" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/macfuse?hl=en -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
