Ratings and Reviews : Listing
PhysicsFS (aptly known as PhysFS) is the best low-level library I've ever used. Small, fast and easily integrated, PhysFS is, hands down, one of the best file system abstraction API's to date and is especially useful for games and embedded systems needing a very small memory footprint.
That being said, there are a few issues to be concerned with. First and foremost, PhysFS is not for the feint of heart or the absolute beginner. If you're not comfortable building your own libraries from scratch, this is not your library (although the CMake system does indeed make the process much less painful).
The lack of really good tutorials coupled with some of the worst examples I've ever seen (said examples are not from the developer or linked from the official website) makes for a bit of a learning curve but this can be easily overcome by looking at the official tutorials and reading the libary documentation (which is actually really good).
Once you get the basics down, PhysFS proves to be extremely useful, efficient and safe. It makes file-system operations virtually transparent (there are some differences in the directories you would use to initialize the library depending on platform) and is capable of working with highly compressed archives in a number of popular and not-so-popular formats.
