Fuse version 0.06
=================

Fuse is combination of Linux kernel module and user space library which
enables you to write user-space filesystems. This module enables you to
write filesystems using perl.

Additional file-systems using Fuse module are released on CPAN using Fuse::
namespace. Currently that includes only Fuse::DBI which allows you to mount
database as file system, but there will be more.

This is a pre-production release.  It seems to work quite well.  In fact, I
can't find any problems with it whatsoever.  If you do, I want to know.


INSTALLATION

To install this module type the standard commands as root:

   perl Makefile.PL
   make
   make test
   make install


DEPENDENCIES

This module requires the FUSE C library and the FUSE kernel module.
See http://fuse.sourceforge.net/

If you intend to use FUSE in threaded mode, you need a version of Perl which
has been compiled with USE_ITHREADS.


COPYRIGHT AND LICENCE

This is contributed to the FUSE project by Mark Glines <mark@glines.org>,
and is therefore subject to the same license and copyright as FUSE itself.
Please see the AUTHORS and COPYING files from the FUSE distribution for
more information.


EXAMPLES

There are a few example scripts.  You can find them in the examples/
subdirectory.  These are:

* example.pl, a simple "Hello world" type of script

* loopback.pl, a filesystem loopback-device.  like fusexmp from
               the main FUSE dist, it simply recurses file operations
               into the real filesystem.  Unlike fusexmp, it only
               re-shares files under the /tmp/test directory.

* rmount.pl, an NFS-workalike which tunnels through SSH.  It requires
             an account on some ssh server (obviously), with public-key
             authentication enabled.  (if you have to type in a password,
             you don't have this.  man ssh_keygen.).  Copy rmount_remote.pl
             to your home directory on the remote machine, and create a
             subdir somewhere, and then run it like:
             ./rmount.pl host /remote/dir /local/dir

* rmount_remote.pl, a ripoff of loopback.pl meant to be used as a backend
                    for rmount.pl.


BUGS

Perl 5.8.7 does not support shared subroutine references.  Until this is
fixed, if you use threaded mode, you need to use symbolic references (i.e.
passing "main::cb" instead of \&cb).  This rules out closures, lexical
subs and that sort of thing, but it does seem to work.

The current test framework seems to work well, but the underlying mount/
unmount infrastructure is a crock.  I am not pleased with that code.  I
also wish there was a way to test without root permissions.

While most things work, I do still have a TODO list:
* "du -sb" reports a couple orders of magnitude too large a size.
* need to sort out cleaner mount semantics for the test framework
* figure out how to un-linuxcentrify the statfs tests
* test everything on other architectures and OS's