Not enough people know about PyFilesystem

[willmcgugan]

If you like it, tweet it or reccomend it to a friend. :)

[althonos]

Or cram it into each and every of your projects :wink:

[geoffjukes]

Already am @althonos 😄

I've been pushing it with developers here (who are more active on Social media than I am).

One comment I got back recently was:

also I'm loving py fs2... that framework has mad my life as a tester 100x more simple

[aidanheerdegen]

@willmcgugan Can you merge this PR so the conda-forge version gets updated?

This is sort of related to popularity as conda is a great way to distribute packages and the old version on conda-forge still has the broken unicode problem https://github.com/PyFilesystem/pyfilesystem2/issues/120

https://github.com/conda-forge/fs-feedstock/pull/13

[willmcgugan]

@aidanheerdegen Done.

[jayvdb]

Created https://github.com/moremoban/moban/issues/205 to add it to moban.

This would be an ideal addition to a Python keepass library/app, to allow storage of the keepass file on such a large number of backends. e.g. all of the keepass apps on Unix cant write to Google Drive, and using google drive fuse driver doesnt work either.

But ... the best way to get more people to know about PyFilesystem ... is ... add git support, e.g. wrapping https://github.com/gitpython-developers/GitPython

[willmcgugan]

@jayvdb Thanks for spreading the word.

I'm not sure how a git FS object would work. I don't think you could wrap GitPython per se, but GitPython could in theory use PyFilesystem as a back-end. That would be interesting, but not something I can see myself attempting!

[jayvdb]

I've created https://github.com/PyFilesystem/webdavfs/issues/19 for GitHub support, via Subversion, via webdavfs.

A more clear way of generically providing git as a filesystem is Python project https://github.com/presslabs/gitfs , which uses https://github.com/libgit2/pygit2 instead of https://github.com/gitpython-developers/GitPython . There are several others in various languages, including https://github.com/g2p/git-fs and https://github.com/google/slothfs , usually not as well maintained.

[jayvdb]

A GitHub fs is underdevelopment at https://github.com/merlink01/fs.github ; I've raised the issue of broader git support at https://github.com/merlink01/fs.github/issues/9

[jayvdb]

It would be useful if https://www.pyfilesystem.org/page/index-of-filesystems/ was maintained. Could it be a static page loaded from github somewhere?

dropbox.fs is now https://github.com/PyFilesystem/fs.dropboxfs

New FS I found with a quick github search:

• https://github.com/nathanhi/pyfat
• https://github.com/go-choppy/fs.ossfs
• https://github.com/hlaf/fs.poormanscrashplanfs
• https://github.com/emedgene/fs_dlk
• https://github.com/fiee/fs.seafile
• https://github.com/onedata/fs-onedatafs
• https://github.com/DamnDam/fs-cellarfs
• https://github.com/merlink01/fs.webradio
• https://github.com/tomgross/pycloud
• https://github.com/inveniosoftware/xrootdpyfs/
• https://github.com/mete0r/mete0r.olefilefs

Two old ones which might be revived

• https://github.com/smartfile/file-versioning
• https://bitbucket.org/delroth/wiiodfs/src/default/

Also https://github.com/pmitros/pyfs readme could point to the new pyfilesystem.

Perhaps also provide a webpage which lists tools which use pyfilesystem, so potential adopters can see successful implementations, and also so fans of pyfilesystem can prefer to choose tools which use this abstraction layer (and thus the tools are likely to work together well)

And there are fs v1 drivers and users which could be updated to work with pyfs2

https://github.com/jaraco/keyrings.alt/blob/master/keyrings/alt/pyfs.py c.f. https://github.com/jaraco/keyrings.alt/issues/20

^ that package is included in most distros, so it has quite a lot of usage.

And helping some fs1 users upgrade may result in the ecosystem growing. I see quite a few academic platform type tools which used fs1 to hide their data storage implementation so the academics (often in humanities rather than comp sci) does need to understand all that stuff. They are unlikely to upgrade unless there is a good reason, unless someone helps them and/or explains the reasons why the old one is not good any more (e.g. security implications).

• https://github.com/ClimateImpactLab/DataFS

[willmcgugan]

That page is maintained. But I haven't been very proactive about it, I update it when anyone asks. It could be a static site rather than a wiki. I'm not sure if accepting PRs would make people more likely to submit updates over posting an issue or contacting me. Perhaps it would.

A page for PyFilesystem tools is probably a good idea. As is more help in upgrading fs1 to fs2. It just requires motivation and time, and I don't have as much time as I'd like.

I'm not sure many people would upgrade their libraries from fs1 to fs2 if they are happy with the functionality in fs1. Older apps and libraries tend to not be actively maintained. Last commit on DataFS was 18 months ago for instance.