[fuse-devel] fuse desktop integration / management library

[Miklos Szeredi]

> are there any plans (or ongoing efforts) for writing a fuse management 
> library for desktop integration / gui based mounting/umounting?

No, I don't have knowledge of such plans.

> what IMHO the library should do:
> 
> * maintain a list of "known" network shares/fuse mountpoints (like 
> fstab, but as key/value config-files in the users home directory)

Sounds sane.  Though I don't see anything wrong with using the fstab
format for this

> * create, mount, unmount, remove fuse mountpoints

mkdir, exec filesystem, exec fusermount -u, rmdir

I don't see what extra a library could do

> * provide a list of currently mounted fuse mounts (like mtab)...

What's wrong with mtab or /proc/mounts?

> * password callbacks (needs support in libfuse or a second library 
> linked into fuse modules, because the current way of specifying 
> passwords as command line args is unsecure)

A nice model for this is ssh-askpass, no need to support anything in
libfuse for this to work.

> * a progress/logging interface for fuse-modules to send messages to an 
> ui-server

Yeah, libfuse needs a logging interface.  fuse-2.8 maybe...

> * emit mount/umount events to all clients of the management system

inotify supports this, doesn't it?

> * translate from uri's to mountpoints back and forth (by using the list 
> of "known" fuse-mounts)
>        ftp://user@server.org/dir/file -> 
> ~/netvols/ftp_user_at_server/dir/file (i believe the dir-name of the 
> mountpoint should be defined by the user, but we could offer him/her a 
> "proposed name")

Makes some sense, but this is definitely not libfuse stuff.

> * get meta-information about fuse-mounts

Huh?

> * provide a "browsing" interface (smb network/servers)

Why is this special?  Reading the directory should just list the
servers, services, etc.  fusesmb for example does this without
problems.

> the fuse management system should consist of three parts:
> 
> * a glib main-loop based client library (async mount/umount operations, 
> events)
> * a dbus service (session bus)
> * an (optionally linked) library used in fuse modules for authentication 
> callbacks and progress/logging events
> 
> a reference implementation of a GUI-based management client would also 
> be cool... (GTK+ ?)
> 
> i am working on a desktop independent vfs library 
> (http://www.scheinwelt.at/~norbertf/devel/vio/),

I don't quite understand what this is.  Is it a replacement for the
kio/gnome-vfs stuff?

Miklos