SSHFS

If you’re a web or software developer, chances are you’ve been frustrated before by the inconvenience of having to SSH into the remote server all the time to work on files. You can’t use the cozy development environment you set up on your own machine. You have to use the server’s tools. (If you really like command line vi then this post isn’t for you).

What if the server doesn’t have the programs installed that you need to do your thing? If you don’t have sufficient access, you may have to get the admin to install the programs for you, and often times they won’t.

Wouldn’t it be nice if you could just mount the server drive and work on the site like they were sitting on your local hard drive? I just discovered SSHFS, which allows you to do just this.

Apparently SSHFS (secure shell file system) has been available for some time on unix/linux, but there was no equivalent on Mac OS X until recently: The MacFUSE project enables SSHFS and many other types of file systems to be mounted just like they were a local hard drive on Mac OS X. Its as simple as opening SSHFS, entering your connection information and your server hard drive will be mounted in finder like it is a local drive. You can run all of your favorite programs on the files.

In my case, what I needed to do was run a patch using then patch command. The server didn’t have patch installed, so I mounted the server using SSHFS and used my local version of patch to patch the files. What a time saver!

This ranks as the best thing since sliced bread in my books.