Gnome vfs is the gnome virtual file system. it is the foundation of the nautilus file manager. it provides a modular architecture and ships with several modules that implement support for local files, http, ftp and others. it provides an uri-based api, a backend supporting asynchronous file operations, a mime type manipulation library and other features.

this package contains unstripped shared libraries. it is provided primarily to provide a backtrace with names in a debugger, to make it easier to interpret core dumps. the libraries are installed in /usr/lib/debug and are automatically used by gdb.