Alternatives to ExpanDrive for local tunneling?

Question

I currently use ExpanDrive to mount my SFTP tunnels as drives so that I may use tools on my own laptop (MacVim, zsh) while editing files remotely. Only complaint I have is that MacVim is slow at some operations (such as using Command-T to traverse through directories to specific files).

Are there any alternatives to have a similar setup yet using different tools that will speed up the process? The goal here is being able to use local environments with remote files through SSH.

Thanks!

Answer 1

You can use the standard VIM pi_netrw plugin http://vimdoc.sourceforge.net/htmldoc/pi_netrw.html. It's similar to EMACS tramp, allowing you to edit remote files from your local editor session. It can be substantially faster than mounting remote disks because it doesn't have to accommodate/mimic block operations.

As for zsh, the only shell I can think of with more functionality is fish, so there may be a solution there. However, I can't speak to it. I'm a ksh/bash guy.

MacFUSE with the SSH plugin is what I typically use when I need this access, as db mentioned above.