This article may need to be rewritten to comply with Wikipedia's quality standards. (June 2017) |
Dokan Library | |
---|---|
Developer(s) | Dokan-dev |
Stable release | 2.2.1.1000
/ January 20, 2025 |
Repository | github |
Written in | C, C++, C#, PowerShell, JavaScript |
Operating system | Microsoft Windows |
Platform | IA-32, x64, Cygwin, MinGW |
Type | Virtual file system, Fuse |
License | LGPL and MIT |
Website | dokan-dev |
Dokan (Japanese: ドカン [土管?], "earthen pipe") is a software interface for Microsoft Windows that lets programmers create virtual file systems without writing a kernel-level driver. This is achieved by running file system code in user space while the Dokan kernel driver translates the request for Windows Kernel. It offers compatibility with the FUSE file system by using a wrapper that can be built with Cygwin and MinGW.
Dokan is free software released under the terms of the LGPL and MIT License.
The Dokan project was originally created and maintained by Hiroki Asakawa from 2007 to 2011, up to version 0.6.0. It was hosted on Google Code.[1] Asakawa was supported by a 2006 grant from the Japanese Information-technology Promotion Agency on a related subject.[2]
From around 2013, it was maintained by the community on a fork called DokanX.[3]
As the development of DokanX slowed in 2014, the French company ISLOG took over with its own fork called Dokany, actively maintained by Adrien Jund (aka "Liryna Stark") and formerly used to be co-maintained by Maxime Chamley. The drivers are now code signed by this company.[4]
Dokan may be installed by end-user installed applications such as Drill Disk.[5]
iPhone users may be able to access their iPhone via Dokan on Windows in a similar way that FUSE can for Unix-like operating systems.[6]
Dokan is particularly useful for writing to a Virtual File System without requiring Windows Kernel knowledge. It gives one the ability to mount a virtual hard drive that contains whatever the developer wants to show, making it an alternative to the professionally developed CBFS Connect library. It can be absolutely virtual using memory like a ramdisk or show remote data like FTP, SSH, Samba, and databases as local storage that can be listed, read, written, and deleted.
Dokan is written in C. It provides bindings in .NET, Java, Ruby, Delphi, and Rust.
Dokanx is a Fork of Dokan 0.6.0
Dokany is a fork of Dokan 0.6.0 with bug fixes, clean change history and updated to build with latest tools.
… it's okay to delete Dokan Library and you can remove it just like any other application. However, by removing Dokan certain applications that rely on it, such as Disk Drill, might not work properly.
It was easy to mount the original iPod and access it liks a USB drive. It's possible to do that with an iPhone, too, although there are different approaches depending on the type of data you want to work with.