Open Source Developers at Google: Amit Singh on MacFuse

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File systems provide one of the most familiar interfaces end users know. Since implementing a traditional file system is extremely complex and difficult, presenting information seamlessly through files and folders has typically been limited to a small set of select programmers--often kernel hackers who develop at the lowest layers of a system. The MacFUSE mechanism breaks this barrier on Mac OS X by doing all the in-kernel hard work once and for all and leaving to the developer only the file-system-specific logic, which can be implemented as a regular user-space application. MacFUSE, with its simple programmer-visible API (same as the Linux FUSE API) and multiple language bindings, almost trivializes the process of making anything and everything appear seamlessly as a set of files and folders. You can use it to blur the line between the Macintosh Desktop and the Web. In this talk, you will hear the story of MacFUSE from its creator.

Keywords: developers, engineering, google, open, software, source