The CernVM-File System (CernVM-FS) provides a scalable, reliable and low-maintenance software distribution service. It was developed to assist scientific collaborations to deploy software on the (geographically) distributed computing infrastructures used to run data processing applications. CernVM-FS is implemented as a POSIX read-only file system in user space (a FUSE module). Files and directories are hosted on standard web servers and mounted in the universal namespace /cvmfs. Internally, CernVM-FS uses content-addressable storage and Merkle trees in order to maintain file data and meta-data. CernVM-FS uses outgoing HTTP connections only, thereby it avoids most of the firewall issues of other network file systems. It transfers data and meta-data on demand and verifies data integrity by cryptographic hashes.