+FTP server or FUSE?
+-------------------
+
+Originally we had intended to implement an NFS server inside the
+appliance, which would allow the guest filesystems to be mounted on
+the host, and large changes to be made. We eventually rejected the
+idea of using NFS, partly because it requires root to mount
+filesystems in the host, and partly because of problems handling UID
+mappings between host and guest filesystem.
+
+Then we look at implementing an FTP server instead. FTP clients are
+widely available for many languages, don't require root, and don't
+have any UID mapping problems. However there is the problem of
+getting the TCP connection into the guest, and that FTP requires a
+secondary data connection either in or out of the guest (the NFS
+situation is even more dire).
+
+Thirdly we looked at implementing a FUSE-based filesystem. This is
+plausible - it could be implemented just by adding the additional FUSE
+operations to the standard guestfs(3) API, and then implementing a
+simple FUSE daemon. (The FUSE website has some very helpful
+documentation and examples). I [RWMJ] am not particularly convinced
+that a FUSE-based filesystem would really be useful to anyone, but am
+prepared to accept patches if someone does all the work.
+
+See also the mountlo project: