Also, regarding VirtioFS: this is indeed something I have not yet tried. I’m wary of this though because this requires installing additional drivers on Windows and I usually prefer using tools that are already at my disposal (e.g. Samba on Windows).
Not Windows specifically. I work on a macOS host so NFS works fine. However, I want to keep my options open for working on a Windows host if necessary and I wanted to keep to the toolset that already exists on the platform. I want to isolate as many responsibilities as possible inside the VM and then use a client on the host to mount the directory. Bonus points if the host already comes with this client out of the box.