HideousFS is a family of projection filesystems that present transformed views of source directories.

It is intended for source trees that need to be comfortable both on RISC OS and on Unix-like systems. Unix and GitHub prefer names such as leaf.c; RISC OS source conventions often use names such as c.leaf. HideousFS lets one layout be viewed as the other.

A HideousFS image file is a small configuration file placed inside the directory to be viewed. The file data are not stored inside the image file; the real files remain in the surrounding directory.

The example name is usually:

View

but the leafname is arbitrary. HideousFS should identify the image by filetype, not by name.

During development the image filetype is:

&001

This is a temporary user-area filetype and may clash with existing uses such as music files.

Hideous mode is for Unix/GitHub-friendly backing stores.

Backing directory as seen through HostFS:

leaf/c
leaf/h
Readme

The same files are typically seen from Unix as:

leaf.c
leaf.h
Readme

HideousFS presents them to RISC OS as:

c.leaf
h.leaf
Readme

Beautiful mode is the reverse view.

Backing directory:

c.leaf
h.leaf
Readme

HideousFS presents:

leaf/c
leaf/h
Readme

This is mainly useful for conversion. Copying files out of a Beautiful-mode view can produce a Unix-friendly layout.

The FUSE product builds a Unix/macOS binary using pkg-config fuse3:

make fuse

Mount a Unix backing directory with:

build/hideousfs-fuse [options] <backing-directory> <mount-point>

Useful options:

--config=FILE
--extension=directory|suffix|pass
--filetypes=pass|suffix|xattr
--reverse=c,h,a,cpp,c++,o,s
--ignore=NAME
--virtualdir=c,h,o
--foreground
--readonly
--debug

extension=directory presents backing names such as leaf.c as c/leaf. extension=suffix presents backing names such as c/leaf as leaf.c. extension=pass leaves leaf names unchanged.

filetypes=pass leaves RISC OS metadata where it is. filetypes=suffix presents user.RISC_OS.LoadExec metadata as comma suffixes where possible. filetypes=xattr presents recognised comma suffixes such as ,ffa and ,0-741829fc as user.RISC_OS.LoadExec.

Run the live FUSE smoke tests with:

make fuse-test

# HideousFS
extension directory
filetypes pass
reverse c h s o a cpp c++
ignore View
ignore .git
virtualdir c h o

For the reverse view:

# HideousFS
extension suffix
filetypes pass
reverse c h s o a cpp c++
ignore View
ignore .git

HideousFS is experimental. The RISC OS image filing system and the FUSE product are both early implementations. The FUSE binary currently supports read/write projection for extension=directory, extension=suffix, and extension=pass, with filetypes=pass, filetypes=suffix, and filetypes=xattr metadata presentation.