fuse library dependencies and their maintenance

[ThomasWaldmann]

borgbackup uses llfuse or pyfuse3 (since borg 1.2) to offer the borg mount functionality.

llfuse is orphaned by its original developer @Nikratio since quite a while, but received some minimal maintenance by me to keep it alive, because we still need it for borg 1.1.x and also for macOS (which does not offer fuse3 yet) and some BSD (which has problems with pyfuse3).

for borg 1.2+ we can use either llfuse or pyfuse3 and for the future it was planned to switch to pyfuse3 eventually, after that actually works for all major platforms we support.

since recently, pyfuse3 is now also orphaned, but still considered as the better alternative compared to llfuse by its original developer @Nikratio. I guess I could do the same sort of minimal maintenance there, but I still need to have a deeper look.

But in general, these projects need developers with (lib)fuse knowledge (that's not me), so if you have that, please consider maintaining these. The stuff basically works, but might need a bug fix now and then and adapt to changes in Python / Cython / libfuse.

Links:

https://github.com/python-llfuse/python-llfuse

https://github.com/libfuse/pyfuse3

[ThomasWaldmann]

https://github.com/ThomasWaldmann/pyfuse3/pull/1 need some help there, tests are failing on github, but work locally.

Update: I added a workaround, seems to be strange kernel behaviour.

[FelixSchwarz]

Is there any preference from borg's side if distributions should link to pyfuse3 or llfuse? I could package pyfuse3 for Fedora but would only do so if it this is still seen as the best option.

[ThomasWaldmann]

I don't see any pros and cons to differentiate the two from a practical or developer's perspective. IIRC, I have asked the author and there was a preference for pyfuse3.

The borg code using these 2 implementations is 95% the same.

[infectormp]

Just found https://github.com/mxmlnkn/mfusepy, you might be interested in this.

[ThomasWaldmann]

@infectormp See #9194, will be in 2.0.0b20.

[ThomasWaldmann]

Update: it seems like pyfuse3 is developed again.

[modem7]

Update: it seems like pyfuse3 is developed again.

Looks like only bugfixes are being maintained. No new features will be making their way into the project.

---

Under the development status section of their readme, they have another potential tool that may be better suited.

`pyfuse3 is stable when used with Trio. The current maintainers ensure that bugs are addressed and pyfuse3 continues to work with new Python and libfuse versions. There is no plan to add new features or other non-bugfix work. However, pull requests for new features or other improvements may be accepted.

Using pyfuse3 with asyncio (rather than Trio) support is less well tested, there may be bugs, and some of them may not be easily fixable.

If you need a synchronous (non async) implementation, mfusepy is a maintained alternative.`

[ThomasWaldmann]

borg now supports llfuse, pyfuse3, mfusepy and webdav.

enough options, hopefully one of the fuse libs gets good enough so we can drop one or two of the others.

[modem7]

borg now supports llfuse, pyfuse3, mfusepy and webdav.

enough options, hopefully one of the fuse libs gets good enough so we can drop one or two of the others.

mfusepy would be a good one to move to once 2.0 gets released - we'll make a move to it when the time comes and give it a test