Hacking Gmail

Chapter 16 — Using GmailFS 215

Installing FUSE

The majority of the cleverness that makes up the GmailFS package comes from

Standing for File System in Userspace, FUSE is a package that allows programs

to implement their own fully functional file system. Your version of Linux may

have it already installed — Debian does, for example — but if not you can down-
load it from http://fuse.sourceforge.net/.

The GmailFS package was developed to work with version 1.3 of FUSE, which is

quite an old version. It is still available for download, however. Later versions of

FUSE may well work, too; it’s worth experimenting.

You also need to install the FUSE Python bindings from http://cvs.source

forge.net/viewcvs.py/fuse/.

Once you have downloaded these packages, you just need to unpack them and fol-

low the instructions within.

Installing Libgmail.

The final tool you need before installing GmailFS is Libgmail. You’ve met this

many times before in earlier chapters. You can get the latest version from
http://libgmail.sourceforge.net/. Remember to download the very latest

version from the CVS section of that site.

Installing GmailFS

Finally you are ready to install GmailFS. Download version 0.3 from
http://richard.jones.name/google-hacks/gmail-filesystem/

gmailfs-0.3.tar.gz, unpack it, and copy gmailfs.pyto /usr/local/bin.

After doing that, copy mount.gmailfsto /sbin.

Finally, the distribution contains a configuration file called gmailfs.conf.It

looks like Listing 16-1.

Listing 16-1: gmailfs.conf

or just

Continued

Installing FUSE