confuse

confuse is a Rust filesystem compatibility layer. On non-Windows platforms it re-exports fuser. On Windows it provides a fuser 0.17-style API facade backed by Dokan for runtime mounting.

The goal is to let downstream filesystem implementations target one fuser-compatible API while still compiling, testing, and running on Linux, macOS, and Windows.

Features

• Non-Windows: pub use fuser::*, preserving upstream fuser behavior.
• Windows: exposes fuser 0.17-compatible public types, replies, the Filesystem trait, mount2, spawn_mount2, Session, and notifier APIs.
• Windows backend: adapts fuser-style callbacks to Dokan requests, mount options, path resolution, TTL caches, and notification bridges.
• Example: examples/memfs contains a cross-platform in-memory filesystem.
• Compatibility tests: tests/api_surface records and verifies the fuser 0.17 API alignment scope.

Platform behavior

The Windows facade has a few intentional differences. Upstream fuser APIs that use std::os::fd::* cannot name those types on Windows, so the facade names the corresponding rustix::fd::* types directly. Unsupported /dev/fuse fd runtime surfaces return io::ErrorKind::Unsupported.

Installation and prerequisites

Rust

This repository uses Rust edition 2024. Cargo.toml declares a minimum supported Rust version of 1.96.

Windows

Runtime mounting requires the Dokan runtime. Windows development and testing use these dependencies:

• dokan
• dokan-sys
• rustix
• widestring
• winapi

Non-Windows

Non-Windows targets depend on fuser. Real FUSE mounts usually also require system FUSE/libfuse support.

Quick start

After adding the dependency, implement Filesystem as you would with fuser:

use confuse::{Config, Filesystem, mount2};

struct MyFs;

impl Filesystem for MyFs {}

fn main() -> std::io::Result<()> {
    let mountpoint = std::env::args_os()
        .nth(1)
        .expect("missing mountpoint");

    mount2(MyFs, mountpoint, &Config::default())
}

Run the bundled in-memory filesystem example:

cargo run --example memfs -- <mountpoint>

On Windows, <mountpoint> can be a drive letter such as M:\ or an empty directory. On Linux/macOS, it is usually an existing mount directory.

Common commands

cargo check
cargo test
cargo run --example memfs -- <mountpoint>

Enable specific compatibility features when needed:

cargo test --features macos-api
cargo test --features serializable

Cargo features

This crate forwards or provides these main features:

• abi-7-20 through abi-7-40: forwards fuser ABI features.
• experimental: enables experimental APIs and turns on async-trait, tokio, and fuser experimental support.
• libfuse, libfuse2, libfuse3: forwards libfuse-related features.
• macfuse-4-compat, macos-no-mount: forwards macOS/fuser compatibility features.
• macos-api: exposes fuser's macOS-only API surface on the Windows facade so cross-platform implementations can compile and be tested.
• serializable: enables serde derives and forwards fuser serializable support.

Repository layout

src/lib.rs                  crate entry point; selects fuser re-export or Windows facade by platform
src/fuser_facade/           fuser 0.17-compatible public API for Windows
src/dokan_impl/             Dokan runtime adapter, mount options, path resolution, and handler routes
examples/memfs/             cross-platform in-memory filesystem example
tests/api_surface/          fuser API surface alignment tests
docs/Design/                facade and Dokan adapter design documents
docs/Standard/              fuser / dokan API architecture analysis

Design documents

• docs/Design/fuser_facade对齐方案.md: API alignment principles for the Windows facade and fuser 0.17.
• docs/Design/dokan_impl调用方案.md: Dokan adapter call design.
• docs/Design/fuser到dokan-sys转换层涉及工作.md: fuser-to-Dokan conversion layer work breakdown.
• docs/Standard/Rust fuser库 API架构分析.md: fuser API architecture analysis.
• docs/Standard/Rust dokan(-sys)库 API架构分析.md: Dokan / dokan-sys API architecture analysis.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.