Jakarta Project Releases Commons Virtual File System 1.0

Summary

The Commons Virtual File System (VFS) provides a single interface to files and data located on local file systems, HTTP and FTP servers, inside zip, gzip, and jar files, or on WebDAV servers. Regardless of location, VFS files are addressed by uniform, URL-based identifiers.

The Apache Jarkarta project released version 1.0 of its Commons Virtual File System, or VFS. VFS provides access to files and other resources located on a variety of media and file systems via uniform, URL-based identifiers. A plug-in framework makes it possible to offer access to file systems not supported in the 1.0 release.

Key 1.0 features include:

* A single consistent API for accessing files of different types
* Support for numerous file system types
* Caching of file information. Caches information in-JVM, and optionally can cache remote file information on the local file system.
* Event delivery
* Support for logical file systems made up of files from various different file systems.
* Utilities for integrating Commons VFS into applications, such as a VFS-aware ClassLoader and URLStreamHandlerFactory.
* A set of VFS-enabled Ant tasks.

In addition to the supported file-systems, what VFS plug-ins would you find most useful?