From: Caleb Clausen <vikkous@...>
Date: 2010-07-13T23:53:23+09:00
Subject: Re: Remote File Handling

On 7/13/10, Brian Candler <b.candler@pobox.com> wrote:
> Michael Maloney wrote:
>> Is there a way to access files directly on remote servers the way you
>> can in the local environment? Can I get into a remote server from my
>> local machine and do things like File.ctime(my_remote_file) ?
>
> Short answer: no.
>
> Long answer: Ruby's Dir and File classes just sit on top of the
> file/directory operations provided by the underlying operating system.
> For example, Dir.pwd and Dir.chdir refer to the process's (local)
> current working directory.
>
> However, on some systems, if you install the right tools, you may be
> able to 'mount' a remote FTP or SFTP server as if it were a local
> filesystem, and then you can traverse that.
>
> In Linux, "FUSE" allows people to write modules which do this. See
> http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Filesystem_in_Userspace
> and follow the links to FTPFS, SSHFS etc.
>
> Supplementary answer: it's also possible to abstract away local vs
> remote file operations to some degree, see for example open-uri.rb in
> the standard library. As far as I know, this hasn't been done to the
> level you are seeking. But feel free to have a go at implementing it
> yourself :-) You may find that you are stumped by the limited support
> for ctime / chmod / chown etc by protocols like FTP.

Or you can use a network file system such as nfs or samba, which makes
remote files appear local to all programs on your computer.