abstract:
  wdfs is a webdav filesystem with special features for accessing subversion
  repositories. it is based on fuse v2.5+ and neon v0.24.7+.


author of wdfs:
  (c) 2005 - 2007 jens m. noedler, noedler@web.de


license:
  wdfs is distributed under the terms of the gnu general public license.
  see file COPYING for details.


home and svn repository of wdfs:
  http://noedler.de/projekte/wdfs/
  http[s]://svn.projectai.org/svn/projects_private/wdfs/


features:
 - generic webdav filesystem
 - http redirect support
 - https support
 - file locking support (different modes)
 - access to all revisions of a webdav exported subversion repository
 - versioning filesystem for autoversioning enabled subversion repositories
   (see section "wdfs, subversion and apache" in this document)


dependencies:
 - operating systems: linux (kernel 2.4 or 2.6), freebsd (6.x or 7.x), mac os x
   hint for linux user: using a kernel 2.6.15 or later is recommended.
 - fuse (filesystem in userspace) v2.5 or later (http://fuse.sourceforge.net/)
 - neon webdav library v0.24.7 or later (http://www.webdav.org/neon/)


installation:
  $ tar xfz wdfs-1.x.x.tar.gz
  $ cd wdfs-1.x.x
  $ ./configure && make
  $ su -c "make install"


usage:
  $ mkdir ~/mountpoint
  $ wdfs http[s]://server[:port][/directory/] ~/mountpoint [options]
  $ wdfs -h      # prints wdfs and fuse options


mounting wdfs using fstab:
  example entry for the /etc/fstab file:
  wdfs#http://server  /mnt/wdfs  fuse  users,locking=simple  0  0

  hint: due to a bug in fuse 2.6.3 and earlier it's not possible to add
  the option "username=abc" to the option list. this will be fixed with 
  later versions of fuse.


wdfs, subversion and apache:
  wdfs may be used to access subversion repositories that are exported as
  webdav using the apache webserver. you need to load the required apache 
  modules for webdav and for subversion and add a location directive like
  the following.

  <Location "/svn">
    DAV svn
    SVNPath /home/jens/repositories/wdfs
    SVNAutoversioning on
    AuthType None
  </Location>


version number conventions:
 - the major number will never change.
 - the minor number changes if new features are introduced or 
   if parts of the api are changed.
   warning: this may include backward-incompatible changes!
 - the last number changes on bug fixes and little non-api changes.
   e.g. v1.1.0 introduced new features from it's predecessor v1.0.1


limitations of this implementation:
 - wdfs is not (yet) multithread safe. it always uses fuse single thread mode.
 - read/write of big files (~ 50 MB+) is slow, because the _complete_ file
   will be GET/PUT on a request.
 - svn mode: only up to 2^31-1 revisions can be accessed,
   because "latest_revision" is an integer variable.
 - svn mode: if a subdirectory of a subversion repository is mounted, the
   "svn_basedir" shows the content of the repository root and not only the
   content of the mounted subdir. [caused by svn_get_remotepath()]
 - http redirect support:
    * there is no redirect support for the mountpoint. please mount the new
      location, that will be printed as an error message.
    * the redirect support is limited to the webdav server, that is mounted.
      redirects to another server are not supported.


limitations of wdfs, caused by other limitations:
 - wdfs supports only utf-8 encoded file and directory names for svn access.
   use utf8 capable applications or pure ascii (no iso8859!) encoded names.
   (limitation caused by subversion, which stores all data utf-8 encoded)
 - wdfs does not support setting file attributes with utime() or utimes().
   (e.g. used by "touch file -m -t 200601010000"). see wdfs_setattr() for
   details. (limitation caused by webdav specification rfc 2518)


source code conventions:
 - variable name "remotepath" is used for WebDAV access (/remote/dir/file)
 - variable name "localpath" is used for local access (/file)
 - variable name "ret" is used for the return values of methods
 - methods and structs starting with "ne_" are part of the neon library
 - error output:
    - "## " prefix for warnings and error messages
 - debug output:
    - ">> " prefix for fuse callback methods
    - "** " prefix for cache related messages (no errors)
    - "++ " prefix for locking related messages (no errors)
 - the code is formated with tabs (tab width 4 characters)
 - every line should not be longer than 80 characters


acknowledgements:
  helmut neukirchen for supervising my bachelor thesis and the development
  of wdfs. miklos szeredi for developing fuse and being a great maintainer.
  the members of the fuse-devel mailing list for helping me and everybody 
  who is contributing to wdfs. thanks!