FAQ

What's the Fud project home page?

The FUD project home page is fud.sourceforge.net, and it's hosted (yes, even this) by SourceForge.

Where I can download Fud?

You can download Fud from the download page or clicking here:

Why is it necessary to mount the remote directory locally?

The remote directory must necessarily be mounted locally so Fud can easily monitor the changes on both local and remote files, which is otherwise difficult to implement.
You can update from local to remote and vice versa just by using - for example - ssh or ftp, but it's not sufficient for the monitoring process that starts, whenever it is necessary, the synchronization phase.

Where's the remote directory mounted?

The remote directory is mounted in ~/.fud/remotedir.

What does the installer do?

Nothing secret: it is a bash script and for that reason it can be viewed by anyone who is able to read it. Consider in this sense to consult a guide for bash.
However, the installer (in order) moves the scripts in /usr/local/bin, makes them executable, moves the icon Fud in /usr/share/app-install/icons, adds the user to the fuse group (if necessary), checks if some dependencies are missing and finally (if possible) proposes the installation.

Will Fud work on my Linux distro?

Yes, if you have a shell bash and if it's possible to install all the dependencies of FUD (see next question). There's no reason to believe that Fud cannot work or being faulty.
The only problem you might encounter could be automated control and installing of Fud dependencies, tasks that are performed by the installer of Fud.
The Fud installer uses dpkg or rpm (depending on availability) to check if the dependencies are installed (so it works on rpm based or deb based distro), then checks if in the system there's a supported package manager and proposes - if necessary - to install any missing dependencies.
Package managers currently supported are apt-get (Debian, Ubuntu and derived), zypper (SUSE and openSUSE), urpmi (Mandriva), yum (Fedora and CentOS) and pacman (ArchLinux).
If dpkg and rpm aren't available, Fud cannot verify if some dependencies are missing. Instead, if there's no supported package manager, the missing dependencies - if verified - can not be installed.
In these cases it is necessary to proceed installing and controlling it manually in the manner typical of your own distribution.
Please, contact us (you can find our contacts on the home page of the project Fud), explaining us in detail what didn't work and especially what's missing: in the next release of Fud, we'll try to adapt the installer to your needs.

What are the required dependencies?

For the master branch, as well as packages and files that we distribute, currently required dependencies are:
curlftpfs inotify-tools libnotify-bin sshfs unison

Can I use a branch other than master, such as trunk?

Yes, of course you can. Normally, the trunk branch is more updated than the master one (or in the same way) and the code incorporates more functionalities. The same concept applies to any other branches (which may vary with time and development needs).
But there's no guarantee on the stability of that code - indeed, even on the master branch code, but this is more reliable.

How is structured the division into branches?

"Permanent" branches (so to speak) are two: master and trunk. Usually, for every new feature a sub-branch of trunk is opened, when it's believed that the new feature is complete and has good chance of working properly (at least as visible in the editor and especially in relation to the rest of the code) changes are reported on the branch trunk and remain here as long as necessary to do different routine tests; if these tests are passed, the changes are reflected in the master branch. In any case - and as already mentioned - nothing and no one guarantees that the code of the master branch is "bug free".
Switching between branches as a whole is a process that can take several long, since more branches converge into a single branch.

I wish in the future Fud would support the X protocol, which is the one I use.

Then, why don't contribute actively to the development of Fud?
If you just haven't time or desire, you can send us an email (our contacts are on the home page of the Fud project), explaining us in detail your own needs.

Does a graphical interface for Fud exist?

Not for now, nor is it planned, it is not strictly necessary to its functioning. If you feel up to it, you could be to one who might develop it...

How and why Fud was born?

See this thread (in italian language) on the debianizzati.org (www.debianizzati.org) forum.