Wddbfs – Mount a SQLite database as a filesystem

• SQLiteDAV

  1 44 6.5 Haskell

  WebDAV server that maps an SQLite database to directories/files

  

• dufs

  29 4,665 8.6 Rust

  A file server that supports static serving, uploading, searching, accessing control, webdav...

I'm with you on wishing WebDAV continued its rollout. These days there are great low-drama server-side deployments like https://github.com/sigoden/dufs. It's run relative too - you could habe multiple dufs processes serving up different directories in different ways. But for WebDAV, you can't simply mount that on the client side for every OS that's equally low configutaion. For that reason, I really like sshfs as it can be initiated from the client-side without a lot of config (just a mkdir of the mapped dir), and it's OK most time despite it's lack of speed and multi-day uptime. I'm on a chromebook now and it turns out that Samba is the easiest client-side tech to use for remote file systems. DAv should've been uniquitous.

• WorkOS

  workos.com sponsored

  The modern identity platform for B2B SaaS. The APIs are flexible and easy-to-use, supporting authentication, user identity, and complex enterprise features like SSO and SCIM provisioning.

  

• libfuse

  21 4,973 8.6 C

  The reference implementation of the Linux FUSE (Filesystem in Userspace) interface

  

I suspect if you've run into problems with a lot of things built on FUSE, the problem is FUSE.

Yes, s3fs and sshfs can both leave the system in an unstable state. For example, there can be a dead mount which is impossible to unmount, and in severe cases, blocks a clean reboot.

A file system in user space (or in network space) should NEVER break the system, no matter what happens in user space (or in network space). Most network file systems try to respect this (albeit with mixed success). FUSE does not.

I'm not claiming FUSE cannot be made to work. Just that it's very bad since (1) plenty of smart people clearly failed to do so (2) the badness it leaves behind should be more than it's permitted to.

I can point to specific issues, but at the end of the day, that's neither here nor there. At the end of the day, something like:

https://github.com/libfuse/libfuse/blob/master/example/poll....

Is about a hundred times more complicated than it should be. It should not require memsets, pthread mutexes, or flags, and should probably have an implementation in a modern, high-level language. To a large extent, that's the point of moving things out of the kernel.

I'm even perhaps okay with being permitted to do low-level operations for a particularly performance-constrained subsystem, but that's not 95% of the uses of something like FUSE.

Footnote: I actually enjoyed writing low-level code like this a lot, when computers were in the single-digit to triple-digit MHz range, and we didn't need to worry about people breaking in over a ubiquitous worldwide internet, but I left that mindset behind decades ago. Right now, I want code to be stable, simple, auditable, and secure.

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