KIO FUSE

FUSE interface for KIO.

Build and Install KIO FUSE

Here we describe how to compile, test, run and install KIO FUSE from source.

Build Dependencies

To install build dependencies on Arch Linux:

pacman -S base-devel fuse3 cmake extra-cmake-modules qt5base kio

(and kio-extras for running certain tests)

To install build dependencies on Fedora 32:

dnf install cmake extra-cmake-modules kf5-kio-devel fuse3-devel 
qt5-qtbase-devel pkg-config

(and kio-extras for running certain tests)

To install build dependencies on openSUSE Tumbleweed:

zypper install extra-cmake-modules 'cmake(KF5KIO)' 'pkgconfig(fuse3)' 
kio-devel 'cmake(Qt5Test)' 'cmake(Qt5Dbus)'

(and kio-extras5 for running certain tests)

To install build dependencies on Ubuntu 19.04:

apt install fuse3 libfuse3-dev build-essential cmake extra-cmake-modules
pkg-config libkf5kio-dev

(and kio-extras for running certain tests)

Build Steps

Once you have installed the build dependencies one can build KIO FUSE itself.

In the root of the git repository run the following:

mkdir build; cd build; cmake .. && make`

Running Tests

In the build directory run the following:

make test

For more verbose output run the following:

make tests ARGS=-V

Installing KIO FUSE

In the build directory run the following:

make install

Usage

This section describes how to start KIO FUSE via DBus activation and by simply running it manually.

KIO FUSE DBus Activation

KIO FUSE is a DBus activated service, so for permanent installation the installed service file has to be in a directory used by dbus-daemon. If you're installing into a custom prefix, you may want to link [prefix]/share/dbus-1/services/org.kde.KIOFuse.service into ~/.local/share/dbus-1/services/ and [prefix]/lib/systemd/user/kio-fuse.service into ~/.local/share/systemd/user/.

To make sure that the installed version is actually used, stop any already running instance with killall kio-fuse and log out and in again.

For quick testing, installation and DBus activation can be skipped. Instead, after stopping any previously running instance, start the built kio-fuse binary with the -f parameter and possibly other options.

The DBus service is automatically used by KIO (5.66+) when opening a file on a KIO URL with a KIO-unaware application.

Running KIO FUSE manually

Create a new directory somewhere, make sure that no daemon is going to clean up after it (like systemd-tmpfiles in /run/user/...) and run kio-fuse -d $dir. The -d means that it shows debug output and does not daemonize - that makes it easier to use it at first.

In your session bus you'll find a org.kde.KIOFuse service with an interface that allows one to communicate with the kio-fuse process.

Let's assume you want to make the files at ftp://user:password@server/directory accessible in your local file system. To send the corresponding mount command, you can use our utility script utils/mount-url.sh as follows:

mount-url.sh ftp://user:password@server/directory

Alternatively, you can simply use dbus-send (which is what mount-url.sh uses anyway):

dbus-send --session --print-reply --type=method_call \
          --dest=org.kde.KIOFuse \
                 /org/kde/KIOFuse \
                 org.kde.KIOFuse.VFS.mountUrl string:ftp://user:password@server/directory

If it failed, KIO FUSE will reply with an appropriate error message. If it succeeded, you will get the location that the URL is mounted on as a reply. In this case it would be $dir/ftp/user@server/directory and the directory will be accessibly at that URL.

After your work is done, simply run fusermount3 -u $dir to unmount the URL and exit kio-fuse.

Have a lot of fun!