March 4th, 2008

ExpanDrive = remote nirvana for your Slice?

Lot’s of buzz for the new Mac app ExpanDrive. There’s even a plug on the Textmate blog, where folks have been clamoring for a remote editing solution for as long as I can remember. ExpanDrive allows you to mount SFTP servers in finder, making remote work easier. Gruber says:

For many typical tasks, ExpanDrive is far more convenient and seamless than a standalone client like Interarchy or Transmit. You don’t have to worry about uploading or downloading, it works more like a USB flash drive — you just save and open files directly. If you open remote files checked out of an SVN (or other revision control system) repository, you can use the built-in SVN commands in BBEdit or TextMate, just as though the files were part of a repository checked out on your local drive.

And everyone comments on how fast and easy it is to use. If you’ve been working on your Slices’ apps via SFTP, this could be the tool you’ve been waiting for.

Update – Jeff from Magnetk sends a $5 off coupon for Slicehost customers. It’s good for the first 50 users and lowers the price to $24. Coupon code: ZQCGHPX2LEGFLFI6

Posted by matt Filed in slicehost, software

12 Comments

  1. March 17th, 2008 at 10:01 PM Reinier

    Yes, I’ve tried sshfs for the mac, but this tool is 10x faster. It’s amazing!

  2. March 17th, 2008 at 10:01 PM Jason W

    I also have just tried it and although it seemed much faster than sshfs it’s still too slow for me. Finder was beachballing while opening files, etc.

    I’ll stick with Interarchy with TextMate for remote editing. It has the snappy.

  3. March 17th, 2008 at 10:01 PM Jon Leighton

    Or on Ubuntu:

    1. Go to Places > Connect to Server… 2. Select “SSH Server” and fill in the details 3. Click “Connect”

    Am I missing something?

  4. March 17th, 2008 at 10:01 PM Jonathan Wight

    Jon, you’re missing that this post is about a Mac OS X product.

  5. March 17th, 2008 at 10:01 PM Jon Leighton

    Jonathan: My comment was slightly tongue in cheek; I really wondered whether ExpanDrive does something over and above the functionality available for free in Nautilus… :)

  6. March 17th, 2008 at 10:01 PM David Hall

    Jon: Maybe you can tell us. Does Nautilus cache any of that file information to make working on projects quicker? Does it automatically reconnect to the server when you put your laptop to sleep and reopen it in a new location? (My post sounds kinda snarkish, but I’m legitimately curious)

  7. March 17th, 2008 at 10:01 PM Duc Nguyen

    How is this different than macfusion (which is FREE)?

  8. March 17th, 2008 at 10:01 PM JJ

    Just how much is expandrive? Is it worth it? It may be hurtful to the budget. But it does sound a lot convenient.

  9. March 17th, 2008 at 10:01 PM Jim

    Of course, for those of us who develop in Ubuntu Linux, this is somewhat less useful as we can browse ssh file systems just as easily as other filesystems.

  10. March 17th, 2008 at 10:01 PM Robert McGovern

    It is certainly faster than sshfs on my MacBook, the only downer at the mo is that the remote user for edited files is 501 and the group is DialOut.

    This is not something I saw using SSHFS.

  11. March 17th, 2008 at 10:01 PM PickledOnion

    Just out of interest – I get the correct permissions for user and group for new and edited files.

    As far as I’m aware it’s a simple SSH (SFTP) connection so I don’t see how it would change the users unless you are actually connecting with those users?

    Having said that I have not investigated a great deal into the back end of the app and am only testing it myself.

    PickledOnion

  12. March 17th, 2008 at 10:01 PM Robert McGovern

    PickledOnion, apologies for the delay been ill.

    Unfortuantly I just upped to 1.03 before trying again with 1.01.

    I agree with you I was expecting that to. The GID (20 which is DialOut) matches the Staff entry on my MacBook and 501 the UID of my user, however I am fairly sure I connected as root and the files I was actually editing where writeable by root only.

    For instance here is my Nginx conf directory. I haven’t corrected the UID / GID from when it was edited recently due to illness:

    
-rw-r--r-- 1 root     root    6148 Mar  4 20:50 .DS_Store
-rw-r--r-- 1 root     root    4096 Mar  2 17:01 ._fastcgi_params
-rw-r--r-- 1 root     root    4096 Mar  2 18:17 ._nginx.conf
-rw-r--r-- 1      501 dialout  977 Mar  2 17:01 fastcgi_params
-rw-r--r-- 1 root     root    2837 Jan 12 21:03 koi-utf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root     root    2223 Jan 12 21:03 koi-win
-rw-r--r-- 1 root     root    2991 Jan 12 21:03 mime.types
-rw-r--r-- 1 root     root    2991 Jan 12 21:03 mime.types.default
-rw-r--r-- 1      501 dialout 1091 Mar  2 18:17 nginx.conf
-rw-r--r-- 1 root     root    2702 Jan 12 21:03 nginx.conf.default
-rw-r--r-- 1 root     root    2702 Jan 12 22:11 nginx.conf.orig
drwxrwxr-x 2 www-data root    4096 Mar  4 20:10 sites-available
drwxrwxr-x 2 www-data root    4096 Mar  2 18:51 sites-enabled
-rw-r--r-- 1 root     root    3610 Jan 12 21:03 win-utf

    I just tried some sample editing on similar files with 1.03 and didn’t have the issue again.

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