Hostless Sessions

Note

This is an alpha feature and not intended for general use yet. However please feel free to play around and give some initial feedback. Contributors to the Saros-Server project are very welcome and might want to take a look at contribution wiki for further information.

Use-case

The use-case of the server is to host session independently of any participant. As it takes the role of the session-host any participant may leave or join the session at any time.

Usage

The Saros-Server is currently not available for download, but is scheduled to be on the next Saros/E Release (no ETA).

If you would like to use the server in the meantime, you will have to build it yourself. Furthermore, you will also have to build the Saros/E versions you want to use with the server yourself to avoid incompatibilities. A guide on how to build Saros (and its different components) is given here.

The server needs it’s own XMPP account and can then be started via: java -Dsaros.server.jid=max@mustermann.de -Dsaros.server.password=1234 -jar saros.server.jar

It will host one Saros-Session, that can be joined via Saros/E:

add the server JID to your contact list
right-click your newly added contact
click “Request Session Invitation”

You may share projects with the server as usual.

Workspace

By default Saros-Server will create a workspace folder in a temporary folder to store projects. You may specify your own folder via saros.server.workspace.

E.g.: java -Dsaros.server.jid=max@mustermann.de -Dsaros.server.password=1234 -Dsaros.server.workspace=/home/user/workspace -jar saros.server.jar

Warning: Be aware that you should not trust the server with existing projects, as this is still an alpha version. For example there is a known issue with multiple projects having the same name, as the server will happily overwrite the existing project as it is assuming the name is unique.

Interactive Mode

The server can optionally provide an interactive console via setting saros.server.interactive to true/yes/y.

E.g.:

$ java -Dsaros.server.interactive=yes -Dsaros.server.jid=max@mustermann.de -Dsaros.server.password=1234 -jar saros.server.jar

# ... omitted log messages

# Welcome to Saros Server (type 'help' for available commands)
> help
invite <JID>... - Invite users to session
share <PATH>... - Share projects relative to the workspace with session participants
help - Print this help
quit - Quit Saros Server
> 

This is mostly intended for debugging/developing.