[TxMt] Apple Filing Protocol

[Trevor Harmon]

As a follow-up to the discussions about remote file editing, I wanted  
to throw another idea out there. First of all, I think the ideal  
solution is to have Mac OS X mount a remote directory in the Finder,  
and then access that directory from TextMate as if it were on a local  
volume. (After all, providing file access is the operating system's  
job; TextMate shouldn't have to implement special support for it.)

I mentioned WebDAV before, and for editing files on a web site, it's  
usually the best solution. Unfortunately, accessing remote files  
outside of the web server's control is very difficult, sometimes  
impossible, with WebDAV. For those cases, I've been resorting to NFS,  
which Mac OS X also supports natively. However, NFS has always been  
buggy in my experience, at least when accessing it across the Internet.

Luckily, Mac users have a third option: the Apple Filing Protocol, or  
AFP. Although it's becoming obsolete in favor of less proprietary  
standards, it doesn't suffer from the weaknesses of WebDAV and NFS.  
Namely, it's not bound to a web server, and it has no trouble  
mounting remote directories over the Internet. I've been using it to  
edit remote shell scripts in TextMate with no problems.

Setting up AFP is very easy if your host system is Linux and you have  
admin rights. You simply install the netatalk package [1] and start  
the AppleTalk daemon. For instance, if you're running Fedora Core:

yum install netatalk
service atalk start

After that, you simply go the Finder, choose Connect To Server, and  
enter afp://myserver. You can then enter your user name and password  
to mount your home directory. More info about configuring share  
points and enabling secure authentication is in the netatalk  
documentation.

Anyway, I just wanted to mention that option for those of you who  
want remote file access without having to rely on a third-party  
utility or wait for SFTP support to be built-in to TextMate.

Trevor

[1] http://netatalk.sourceforge.net/

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