Files

Virtual File System (VFS)

The primary way to access files within your node is through the VFS API. The VFS API follows std::fs closely, while also adding some capabilities checks on paths. Use the kinode_process_lib to interact with the VFS.

VFS files exist in the vfs/ directory within your home node, and files are grouped by package_id. For example, part of the VFS might look like:

node-home/vfs
├── app_store:sys
│   ├── pkg
│   │   ├── api
│   │   │   └── app_store:sys-v0.wit
│   │   ├── app_store.wasm
│   │   ├── manifest.json
│   │   ...
│   └── tmp
├── chess:sys
│   ├── pkg
│   │   ├── api
│   │   │   └── chess:sys-v0.wit
│   │   ├── chess.wasm
│   │   ├── manifest.json
│   │   └── ui
│   │       │
│   │       ...
│   └── tmp
├── homepage:sys
│   ├── pkg
│   │   ├── api
│   │   │   └── homepage:sys-v0.wit
│   │   ├── homepage.wasm
│   │   ├── manifest.json
│   │   └── ui
│   │       │
│   │       ...
│   └── tmp
...

Drives

A drive is a directory within a package's VFS directory, e.g., app_store:sys/pkg/ or your-package:publisher.os/my-drive/. Drives are owned by processes. Processes can share access to drives they own via capabilities. Each package is spawned with two drives: pkg/ and tmp/. All processes in a package have caps to these default drives. Processes can also create additional drives. These new drives are permissioned at the process-level: other processes will need to be granted capabilities to read or write these drives.

pkg/ drive

The pkg/ drive contains metadata about the package that Kinode requires to run that package, .wasm binaries, and optionally the API of the package and the UI. When creating packages, the pkg/ drive is populated by kit build and loaded into the Kinode using kit start-package.

tmp/ drive

The tmp/ drive can be written to directly by the owning package using standard filesystem functionality (i.e. std::fs in Rust) via WASI in addition to the Kinode VFS.

Usage

For usage examples, see the VFS API.