easiest way to program a virtual file system in windows with Python

Question

I want to program a virtual file system in Windows with Python.

That is, a program in Python whose interface is actually an "explorer windows". You can create & manipulate file-like objects but instead of being created in the hard disk as regular files they are managed by my program and, say, stored remotely, or encrypted or compressed or versioned, or whatever I can do with Python.

What is the easiest way to do that?

Answer 1

While perhaps not quite ripe yet (unfortunately I have no first-hand experience with it), pywinfuse looks exactly like what you're looking for.

Answer 2

Have a look at Dokan a User mode filesystem for Windows. There are Ruby, .NET (and Java by 3rd party) bindings available, and I don't think it'll be difficult to write python bindings either.

Answer 3

Does it need to be Windows-native? There is at least one protocol which can be both browsed by Windows Explorer, and served by free Python libraries: FTP. Stick your program behind pyftpdlib and you're done.