Recommendation: ExpanDrive

Over the past couple weeks, I've needed to do something slightly new. I use and love TextMate for all development work (it's totally awesome). However, TextMate doesn't know how to play with anything outside the Mac OS X filesystem, meaning that if you want to edit on a server, well, tough. You can sort of use Cyberduck to get part of the way there by using the "Open in TextMate" option in Cyberduck, but it's an underwhelming workaround; projects don't work at all, and...yeah. Blech. It was better than nothing, though.

Until now! :) I happened to find (via. the TextMate blog) a tool that finally solves this problem for me. The tool in question is called ExpanDrive, and its use is far beyond what I actually needed. It lets you mount through SSH/SFTP a drive into OS X. And then it's just like any other drive. (Incidentally, there's a Windows equivelant, too...no guarantees on whether it works as flawlessly as the Mac OS X one.)

This program works like a charm. It completely solves my TextMate project problem because TextMate doesn't know the difference between it and my local filesystem, so it can map a project to a directory within the server with no problem now. There's just a hint of a delay when saving, but the accent there is on "a hint"; it's easily under a second and probably under half a second. I've yet to have the network drive pull a brain fart and become disconnected or anything else annoying. In short: I love it. Highly recommended!

Note: In the days of paid blogging and similar bullshit, it's worth noting: this is not such a blog entry. This is an actual and unsolicited recommendation from me, myself, and I.