dokan

Dokan is a Windows user-space file system framework that provides a FUSE-like interface for developing file systems in user space. It is designed to allow developers to implement file systems without requiring kernel-mode development, by bridging Windows I/O requests from a kernel driver to a user-space implementation.

It consists of a kernel-mode driver, typically named dokan.sys, and a user-mode library, Dokan.dll, which exposes an API for implementing file systems. A developer writes the file-system logic in a language such as C or C++ (or uses wrappers for other languages), and Dokan translates Windows I/O requests into calls to the user-space implementation.

The framework allows creating virtual drives that mount remote resources, cloud storage, databases, or custom protocols as local folders. Typical workflows include implementing operations such as create, read, write, delete, and directory listing; Dokan handles scheduling and I/O semantics while the developer focuses on data access.

Dokan is an open-source project intended to bring the flexibility of Linux's FUSE to Windows. It has seen multiple releases and forks, and distribution terms can vary by version; users should review the license for their specific build.

The project is used by developers to prototype and deploy file-system integrations without kernel-mode development. It is analogous to FUSE on Linux and complements Windows-based development by enabling user-space file-system implementations.

Security and deployment considerations include requiring administrative privileges to install the driver, and ensuring that the file system code handles errors and latency gracefully.