:PROPERTIES:
:ID:       4703f8c2-225c-4c76-a788-af04b84309ac
:ROAM_REFS: cite:allanconSoftwareHeritageFilesystem2021
:END:
#+title: The Software Heritage Filesystem (SwhFS): Integrating Source Code Archival with Development
#+date: 2021-07-27 17:06:14 +08:00
#+date_modified: 2021-07-28 00:06:18 +08:00
#+published: 2021-02-12
#+author: Allançon, T., Pietri, A., & Zacchiroli, S.
#+source: http://arxiv.org/abs/2102.06390
#+language: en


- primarily features =swh-fuse=, a utility allowing to mount software from [[id:9c85ffb2-fc90-4b38-abce-f0425a2b79de][Software Heritage]] to your local environment quickly
- it is based from POSIX filesystems built with FUSE framework;
  as such it does not require root privileges to use it
- it exposes the global merkle tree as a filesystem along with its metadata, archive, etc.
- it can interact with the objects in the merkle tree such as the source code files, commits, snapshots, etc.
- the tool is essentially a FUSE adapter to Software Heritage API
- future considerations include for mining software repositories and integrations with Git making commands work inside of the filesystem

features:
- the tool lazily loads the archives to save bandwidth and disk space
- caches for performance especially with how bad remote filesystems can be
- reduces redundancy by using symlinks extensively