[v3] Feature Requests

[FTCHD]

this is your chance 😆

what would you like to see in the next major version of rclone-ui?

[AdamXweb]

For a machine that doesn't have a config, a better onboarding experience would be good, rather than displaying error with 'no config found' and closing. (MacOS apple silicon)

On MacOS, integrating with File Provider would be amazing rather than relying on fuse

[AdamXweb]

Also, if the app is meant to cater to non-technical users, maybe pre-configured 'templated' options for common settings with rclone would be good to get some people started?

[FTCHD]

maybe pre-configured 'templated' options for common settings with rclone would be good to get some people started?

sounds good, did you have anything specific in mind when saying this?

[iclems]

Could you support nfsmount if the extension for FUSE is not installed? It's now recommended iirc, and I'm using it with the new iCloud Drive

[luciodaou]

WedDAV support.

[FTCHD]

Could you support nfsmount if the extension for FUSE is not installed? It's now recommended iirc, and I'm using it with the new iCloud Drive

I'm curious about the reason for this, are macfuse or fuse-t unable to be installed on the machine?? fuse-t is kextless/userspace

[iclems]

Maybe I misread but I thought there were no significant benefits at this point of not using the native nfsmount.

[FTCHD]

On MacOS, integrating with File Provider would be amazing rather than relying on fuse

From my understanding, it would be a lot of work for a result that's not better than mount.

This reply in the rclone repo pretty much sums up the usefulness and differences of FileProvider vs mount:

It's more like native selective sync; it won't replace rclone mount.

From macFUSE developer Benjamin Fleischer:

File Providers are no file systems. In simple terms, File Providers are a plugin to sync files more or less transparently and store them buried in the the user's home directory. There is no (virtual) volume. macFUSE on the other hand allows you to write full-featured file systems. The File Provider framework lacks many features that macFUSE relies on. Therefore it is not possible to implement macFUSE using File Providers.

File Providers are tailored to a very specific use case and this is keeping a local copy of your personal files in sync with a cloud storage service.

File providers do not support common use cases like transparent encryption or decryption. In the File Provider context your files will always be stored unencrypted.

File Providers don't support streaming file content. So if you want to play a movie file stored in the cloud, the complete file needs to be downloaded first before it can be played. In case of macFUSE, playback starts almost instantly because file content can be streamed. Appending a couple of bytes to a large file on a macFUSE volume means you will just have to download and upload a couple of bytes of the file. Using File Providers the whole file needs to be download and then uploaded again.

File Providers are not intended for mounting a volumes in order to access some files real quick and then unmounting the volume again. There is a significant overhead due to File Providers creating local placeholder files for all remote files. In fact, there is no unmount button in Finder for File Providers.

It would not be possible (or make sense) to build local file systems like NTFS or even network file systems using the File Provider API.

Dealing with conflicts can be hard using File Providers. In case of macFUSE every write is synchronous. This means you know exactly which range of the file has changed and you can push the changes to your backend (and notify other hosts of the changes) synchronously. This is not supported by File Providers. With File Providers you receive a callback after the file has been changed by the user. You don’t know which part of the file has changed and you have no way of performing any locking while the file is being modified.

These are just a few differences. There are more.

TL;DR

The macFUSE functionality cannot be moved to the File Provider API. macFUSE is more versatile than File Providers. File System kernel extensions have not been deprecated by Apple, yet. I expect Apple to release a new user space API for developing full-featured file systems. I will do my best to update macFUSE to use this new API instead of the old kernel API as soon as the new API becomes available.

Future of kexts and File Provider

[FTCHD]

WebDAV support is now available in the latest version (you can also update straight from the app in Settings)

let me know if that suits you @luciodaou

[luciodaou]

WebDAV support is now available in the latest version (you can also update straight from the app in Settings)

let me know if that suits you @luciodaou

It works! Since 1.8.1, actually.

Thanks for the heads-up! 😁

[MajorTomDE]

Flatpak Version released on Flathub :-)