FUSE-Compliant File System Implementation Mechanism for Mac OS X
MacFUSE implements a mechanism that makes it possible to implement a fully functional file system in a user-space program on Mac OS X (10.4 and above). It aims to be API-compliant with the FUSE (File-system in USErspace) mechanism that originated on Linux. Therefore, many existing FUSE file systems become readily usable on Mac OS X. The core of MacFUSE is in a dynamically loadable kernel extension.
Although MacFUSE has a completely different kernel-level implementation from Linux FUSE, it supports the FUSE specification well enough that many popular FUSE file systems can be easily compiled and work on Mac OS X--often out of the box. Examples of file systems that work and have been tested (to varying degrees) include sshfs, ntfs-3g (read/write NTFS), ftpfs (read/write FTP), wdfs (WebDAV), cryptofs, encfs, bindfs, unionfs, beaglefs (yes, including the entire Beagle paraphernalia), and so on.
