ANN: pythonfs - create linux filesystems in python

[Alan Kennedy]

[David McNab]
>>a framework which allows mountable linux filesystems to be
>>implemented in pure python.

[Rene Pijlman]
> Serious question: why?

One very serious usage that springs to mind is to implement a
versioned virtual file system, in combination with a version control
system like subversion (subversion.tigris.org).

ClearCase (the versioning system) has the concept of such virtual file
systems. You specify a view of the "Versioned Object Base" (VOB): the
view is specified using dates/labels/revision numbers/etc, and is
specified inside a "config spec" file. [1]

Once you have specified your configspec, ClearCase creates a virtual
file system, in which every file and directory actually resides inside
the ClearCase VOB, so you are actually working directly on versioned
files, even though your filesystem just looks like a plain ordinary
file system: no special tools or techniques required.

Subversion supports python fantastically well:-

 o Python scripts can be executed pre- and post-commit[2]
 o Python interfaces to all the important subversion libraries are
available, through SWIG[3]

It seems to me that David's work could be the last link in the chain
to creating a complete VFS-based versioning system, using python and
subversion.

And that's just one idea that occurred to me: I'm sure that there are
*plenty* of others.

Nice one David!

regards,

-- 
alan kennedy
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[1]
http://www.agsrhichome.bnl.gov/Controls/doc/ClearCaseEnv/v4.0doc/cpf_4.0/ccase_ux/ccdev/ccdev-6.html

[2]
http://svnbook.red-bean.com/html-chunk/ch05s02.html#svn-ch-5-sect-2.1

[3]
http://svnbook.red-bean.com/html-chunk/ch07s02.html#svn-ch-7-sect-2.3