VMware release a new fling, a Service Virtual File System. Building on top of the FUSE API (Linux specific) and the llfuse library, Services Virtual File System (SVFS) aims to provide an easy way for creating a custom file system that integrates seamlessly with the native Linux one. Users are able to execute almost all operations on it, including but not limited to creation and removal of files and directories, as well as searches and read from/write to files. This allows the user to map just about any structure to a Linux file system, using the abstractions provided in SVFS.

By providing a coherent mapping of REST API operations to file system commands, one can map a RESTful web service to the file system. For instance, HTTP GET can populate a directory when a read (ls) is triggered, or HTTP POST can be executed on file open/execution. A tree command can traverse the whole REST tree and map everything from the API locally. This enables automation through scripts that execute on the file system instead of crawlers that follow URLs.

 

Services Virtual File System

System Requirements

  • Unix-based OS with FUSE
  • llfuse
  • Python 3.3 or higher

Dependencies

  • python3.3-dev or higher
  • libfuse-dev
  • libattr1-dev
  • easy_install-3.3 (setuptools) or higher
  • pip3.3 or higher

 

Instructions

Run the following commands with Python 3.3 already installed:

sudo apt-get install python3.3-dev libfuse-dev libattr1-dev
wget http://python-distribute.org/distribute_setup.py
sudo python3.3 distribute_setup.py
sudo easy_install-3.3 pip
sudo pip3.3 install llfuse

Or run the following commands with Python 3.4 already installed:

sudo apt-get install python3-dev python3-setuptools libfuse-dev libattr1-dev
sudo easy_install3 pip
sudo pip install llfuse

You can download the Services Virtual File System Fling here.