As it turns out, Apple File Sharing is configurable, via NetInfo. Despite the dearth of documentation, you can even share folders other than ~/Public. Alas, doing the NetInfo / System Preferences dance is a hassle. So I scripted it.
Now you can control your file sharing with a single command from the comfort of your shell of choice.
[Editor's note: You can also control shares with the shareware program SharePoints, which has been discussed here before. But it's nice to have a command-line option available as well, so thanks to 'logan' for putting this together.]
Mac OS X Hints
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20020513235510868