[TxMt] ExpanDrive for remote projects over SSH: snappy (at last)

[Jonathan Ragan-Kelley]

Hello all,

As a long-time TextMate user I'm well aware of the issues working with
projects on remote filesystems -- I have been doing it day in and day
out for just over three years now, using different combinations of
tools. Like many of you, I've used Transmit for quick single-file
edits and MacFusion/sshfs for heavier remote work for the past year or
more, and they work well enough to be productive, but with well-known
frustrations (latency, connection resilience).

Lately I'm using ExpanDrive (http://www.magnetk.com/expandrive), which
just launched officially. Same transport (SSH/SFTP), but with very
aggressive caching and intelligent connection management under the
hood. Together, they make it *way* snappier than sshfs on even
high-latency links, and allow your mounts to stay live on finicky or
intermittent connections, even as you sleep your laptop one place and
wake it hours later on an entirely different network.

It's a from-scratch new filesystem, not just a GUI for sshfs (though
it does use the MacFUSE core), so its performance and stability are
quite unlike what you may be used to. Of particular note (and this was
a goal in development), the caching works well enough to largely
eliminate the TextMate project focus lag problems we're all so
familiar with by now, even over long-distance connections.

(Full disclosure: I am tangentially connected with this project.)

I think some of you will quite like it.
-jrk