I have a Django project similar to cloud storage and we produced a desktop app for it. Our desktop application works well but it downloads files from cloud storage to show them in the application. Now, I'm trying to change our app's flow to be more like the Google Drive app.
In the Google Drive application, there are two syncing options:
- Stream files
- Mirror files
In mirror file mode, it downloads all the files from storage to the local drive, but in stream file mode, it just shows general information about your files on cloud storage in a mounted folder ('My Drive) and does not download files until you need to. The files are similar to other local files on your local hard drive.
My question is, what are those file-like things that are shown in your local system in stream file mode? Are those file systems (FS)? How can I create such a thing in Windows?
there is a truncate command in Linux that creates a file with a defined size without allocating storage to it.
truncate -s 100T test
the above command creates a file named 'test' and when you get file information in its settings, its size is 100 Terabytes, while my hard drive's capacity is 1 Terabyte! But when I do the same thing in Windows, OS tries to allocate storage to the file (in my case I get a storage capacity error)
I have a project similar to cloud storage and we produced a desktop app for it. Our desktop application works well but it downloads files from cloud storage to show them in the application. Now, I'm trying to change our app's flow to be more like the Google Drive app.
In the Google Drive application, there are two syncing options:
- Stream files
- Mirror files
In mirror file mode, it downloads all the files from storage to the local drive, but in stream file mode, it just shows general information about your files on cloud storage in a mounted folder ('My Drive) and does not download files until you need to. The files are similar to other local files on your local hard drive.
My question is, what are those file-like things that are shown in your local system in stream file mode? Are those file systems (FS)? How can I create such a thing in Windows?
there is a truncate command in linux that creates a file with defined size without allocating storage to it.
truncate -s 100T test
the above command creates a file named 'test' and when you get file information in its settings, its size is 100 Terabytes, while my hard drive's capacity is 1 Terabyte! But when I do the same thing in Windows, OS tries to allocate storage to the file (in my case I get a storage capacity error)
This is a virtual filesystem, so the files do not exist on your computer (maybe, some data is kept in cache, but that's not what you are looking for). Basically, the filesystem implementation receives requests from the OS and handles them like a "real" filesystem does, but there may be no file-to-file matching with any local filesystem present. The implementation renders directory and file contents on the fly by accessing google drive servers.
Depending on your requirements, different approaches are possible - virtual files on an existing filesystem, or a virtual filesystem like in your example. Callback Technologies has a line of products for developers (I am behind their design) for creation of virtual filesystems and drives in your applications.