Hello Ben,
Also, how well does the vfs server handle config updates?
the VFS does not support dynamic reconfiguration. (yet)
Can you give me more details on the status of the vfs in that regard? Specifically, how does it handle duplicates and writing?
The order of sub nodes within the top-level <vfs> node and within <dir> nodes defines how content is shadowed.
The VFS does not support copy-on-write. A file provided by a read-only file system will stay read only and cannot be changed. However, we plan to supplement copy-on-write support as a plugin later. Until then, the use case of providing an initial version of a config file that can be modified at runtime cannot be covered by the vfs. Here, we still have to use the ram_fs loaded with initial <content>.
Which filesystem/plugin provides the file? And which one is written to when a new file is created?
A new file is created on the first writeable file system mounted at the directory hosting the new file.
You may experiment with the VFS using a <ram> file system as a writeable file system and <tar> file systems for read-only content. You may also find the various noux scenarios worth looking at because they all use the VFS. In particular, they mount multiple tar archives at '/' where each tar archive contains a '/bin' directory. In the VFS, the joint content of all archives becomes visible.
Cheers Norman