ZulipFS

Initial setup

Download a config file for your Zulip instance and save it at $HOME/.zuliprc.

sudo mkdir /mnt/zulip
sudo chown $USER:$USER /mnt/zulip
python3 -m pip install -r requirements.txt

Usage

python3 zulipfs.py /mnt/zulip

List channels

ls /mnt/zulip

List topics within a channel

This only displays topics you've read prior to running this command. To know why, read the accompaniying blog post.

ls /mnt/zulip/<channel>

Read messages of a topic

Displays messages from the time the filesystem was mounted

cat /mnt/zulip/<channel>/<topic>

Receive new messages from a topic as they arrive

tail -f /mnt/zulip/<channel>/<topic>

Write message to topic

echo 'message' >> /mnt/zulip/<channel>/<topic>

Unmount when done

umount /mnt/zulip

Limitations

• The current implementation doesn't support the redirection operator >, which could be used to create a new topic if it doesn't exist.
• Buggy on macOS: I can read messages fine, but writing works only if I read the message once. And even then, it writes the contents of the entire file (which includes older messages) instead of just the message I passed to it.

Resources

• A hand-holding guide to writing FUSE-based filesystems in Python
• florczakraf/slackfs: Browse and upload slack files directly from your filesystem