• Description
• Reasoning
• Authors

CircularFS is a FUSE-mounted filesystem where:

1.) A directory index contains a list of all the (unique) directories and subdirectories in the tree. Example:

~/example
  ./images
  ./mockups
  ./screencasts

2.) Entering one of the sub-directories will narrow down the files/directories.

~/example/mockups
  images-Homepage.psd
  ./images
  Mockups.ppt

~/example/mockups/images
  Homepage.psd
  
~/example/screencasts/images
  Background.psd

3.) Those files also exist in any other subdirectory which is part of the path and be prefixed accordingly.

~/example/images
  mockups-Homepage.psd
  ./mockups
  screencasts-Background.psd
  ./screencasts

~/example/screencasts
  images-Background.psd
  ./images
  Screencast.mov

Thus the contents of ~/examples/images/screencasts == ~/examples/screencats/images.

It's inefficient to go digging through sub directories if you have a layout such as this and just want to look at "all images".

~/foo
  ./screencats/images
  ./images

Instead of inspecting each directory, you could simply see "all images" at ./images.

Instead of remembering "my 'screencast image files' are located at ./screencasts/images" you could change directory into either ./screencasts/images or ./images/screencasts.

Andrew Yates and Erik Nomitch

Original concept by Erik Nomitch