What is nfs-crust?

nfs-crust is a Rust library that lets programs read and write whole files on a network file server using the NFS protocol, without needing the operating system to mount that server as a drive first. NFS is a way computers share files over a network so a remote folder looks and acts like a local one. Normally using NFS means asking the operating system to set up a mount point, but this library talks to the NFS server directly from within the application instead. It is built specifically for files that get written once and then only ever read afterward, such as log pieces or content addressed data chunks, not for files that change over time. Each file also needs to fit comfortably in memory. The README is upfront that this is an experimental project: the authors do not yet use it in their own production systems, and it has not gone through a full outside review. The library offers a small set of operations rather than a full file system. You can publish a file atomically, meaning it either fully succeeds or fails without leaving a half written file behind, read a whole file or just part of it, check a file's type and size, delete a file, and list the files inside a folder one page at a time. It also includes a way to clean up leftover temporary files from writes that got interrupted partway through. Because it works over a network, some operations can fail in an ambiguous way if the connection drops at the wrong moment, and the library is explicit about surfacing that uncertainty rather than silently guessing what happened. It also supports encrypting the connection with TLS and can authenticate to Amazon's EFS cloud storage service using AWS credentials. The project is written in Rust and requires a fairly recent Rust version. It is released under the MIT license, which allows free use, modification, and sharing, including for commercial purposes, as long as the copyright notice is kept.