Kernel extensions in MacPorts

[Kevin Ballard]

I've been looking into the feasibility of providing a port for  
MacFUSE (note: I'm Eridius). Unfortunately, I believe doing so will  
require some changes to the MacPorts codebase.

The biggest problem is, at least with the official release (I haven't  
tested with svn HEAD yet), there's no support for a pre-deactivate  
hook. A pre-deactivate hook would be necessary here in order to  
attempt to kextunload the MacFUSE kext (I'm assuming it can be  
unloaded once loaded, if no FUSE filesystems are mounted, but I don't  
actually know that for a fact). Alternately, if the kext cannot be  
unloaded, a post-deactivate hook would be necessary to tell the user  
that they have to reboot. Alternately this could be done in a pre- 
deactivate hook that prompts the user if they really want to  
continue, knowing they'd have to reboot.

Actually, offhand that's the only real problem I can think of, though  
I thought there were others. Maybe I'll remember others later, maybe  
not. In any case, the pre/post-deactivate hook is pretty important  
here. And actually, I want a pre-deactivate hook for another port, so  
it's probably worth doing regardless of MacFUSE.

In any case, we also want a source distribution of MacFUSE available  
for this. I've filed a ticket on the MacFUSE project, so hopefully  
it'll happen. If not, somebody could always host one, but I'm hoping  
for an official one.

Perhaps I'll try contacting Amit Singh later to get his input on this.

If you're interested in helping out regarding getting MacFUSE into  
MacPorts, I'm willing to be responsible for seeing this happen, so  
feel free to talk to me. Best way is to contact me on IRC, I go by  
Eridius and I hang out on the #macports channel. Alternatively you  
can reach me as Aranor8 on AIM, or at <eridius at macports.org>.

-Kevin Ballard a.k.a. Eridius

On Jan 14, 2007, at 11:23 AM, Pierre Queinnec wrote:

> Eridius pointed me on IRC to MacFUSE, the recently released FUSE  
> port to OS X. I wanted to see if there is interest in having it in  
> our ports.
>
> There is a major drawback in having kernel modules in the ports in  
> the fact that it's a tad easier for curious & inexperienced users  
> to mess up their systems. Of course, it's also a lot cooler for  
> some of us to just install sshfs and make it work without spending  
> too much time. This drawback could probably be addressed by having  
> a separate category (something called 'kernel' for example) where  
> we'd warn users that they can mess their systems up if they don't  
> know what they're doing.
>
> My first question is wether we want kexts in MacPorts at once. FUSE  
> would be a fine addition then, we could also add something like a  
> tun/tap device. If we are to just distribute the userland stuff,  
> it's going to be harder to get users to update their kexts to match  
> the userland libs versions.

-- 
Kevin Ballard
http://kevin.sb.org
eridius at macports.org
http://www.tildesoft.com


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