Investigate adding reverse mounting support for Windows

[dustymabe]

Similar to #46 where we have users that want to use reverse mounts on mac OS, we have users that want to use reverse mounts on windows. I can't remember if I didn't implement it because of time or if there was a technical reason. Need to investigate.

[geerlingguy]

@dustymabe thanks! FWIW, I'm currently trying to come up with the best high-performance option for Windows users using Drupal VM (and potentially other Vagrant VMs like Homestead, Phansible, etc.); right now the most reliable option is a manual Samba-based reverse mount (you install samba in the VM, create a share, then manually mount it in windows and create a network location for easy access).

But if I could get SSHFS working, and especially if it could be managed in the Vagrantfile (instead of a more manual process), that would be the killer solution for many Windows devs I work with on projects like Drupal or Symfony apps.

[dustymabe]

@geerlingguy cool. i'm not sure how "high performance" sshfs is, but it sure does make for a easier to manage solution. you may be able to check the performance now by just setting up an sshfs mount manually.

[geerlingguy]

@dustymabe - Just having the option for reverse mount would be a godsend. The problem is, any of the available options besides rsync (which has it's own major annoyances) are dog slow since Drupal sites have thousands (or more) source files that need to be stated on every page load. Just doing the file seeks using any option usually takes 50% or more of the page load time 😱

Reverse mounts allow the VirtualBox filesystem to be used internally, which allows caching and is much faster for loading Drupal sites. And developers can still access the files in Windows and use their heavyweight IDEs (granted, file access in the IDE is slower, so global search-and-replace is slower...).

[dustymabe]

ok, looked at this today. The problem right now that I can see is that I can't find an sshfs client for windows that is not a GUI and has a CLI. If you find one, let me know.

[geerlingguy]

@dustymabe - Yeah, it seems most of the solutions are wrappers for userland stuff...

• https://github.com/apaka/win-sshfs
• https://github.com/dokan-dev/dokany
• https://github.com/Foreveryone-cz/win-sshfs

What's with Windows users and GUIs? :P

[dustymabe]

adding the blocked label on this until something pops up