Introducing MPQFS

Monday, April 2, 2007 in Projects | 1 comment

Update: mpqfs 0.3 is available.

MPQFS (or MoPaQ Filesystem) is a FUSE filesystem that allows one to mount a MoPaQ archive and use regular system tools such as the Finder or standard UNIX programs to access the content of the archive.

Before you can use MPQFS, you will need to install (or compile) MacFUSE, the Mac OS X FUSE implementation written by Amit Singh (author of the excellent Mac OS X Internals: A Systems Approach, the reference outside of Apple on Mac OS X’s architecture). MPQFS expects FUSE (specifically libfuse) to be installed in /usr/local/lib, so for those of you who have installed FUSE through MacPorts or Fink, you will need to either recompile MPQFS or create a symbolic link.

Version 0.1 is read-only (sorry!), but I fully intend on introducing write capabilities in the future. You can mount as many archives as you want, even the same one multiple times. You may even mount MPQ archives stored inside mounted MPQ archives, something MPQKit doesn’t even handle yet.

If you get a crash of find something that doesn’t work right, I have created a new MPQFS component on the MPQKit development wiki, so make sure to report those in.

Finally, it should be noted that inside the application bundle (in Contents/MacOS), you will find mpqfsd, the program that actually implements MPQFS. mpqfsd can be invoked from the command-line (even from non-graphical sessions for all you SSH people) and provides a rich command-line interface to let you play with mount options.