With FUSE it is possible to implement a fully functional filesystem in a userspace program, this allow great implementations like HTTPFS.

Before start don’t forget to load fuse module (i.e: modprobe fuse). Lets do an example, suppose you need check latest Gentoo ISO to catch some files.

$ mkdir ~/GentooISO
$ mkdir ~/GentooISO/minimal
$ httpfs http://216.165.129.135/releases/x86/autobuilds/\
current-iso/install-x86-minimal-20100216.iso GentooISO/
$ cd ~/GentooISO
$ mount -o ro,loop install-x86-minimal-20100216.iso  minimal

Note that I used 216.165.129.135  instead distfiles.gentoo.org to avoid http error.

HEAD (read) failed with Status 302

You coud see the corret IP using, for example, wget.

Try it! It’s really fast.