Saros/I 0.2.1 Release Notes

This is an alpha release of Saros/I, so expect it to still be a bit rough around the edges. There are still some restrictions that apply to the usage and some basic features are still missing.

Disclaimer

Saros/I does not include sub-modules when sharing a module (see module restrictions). As a consequence, such sub-modules might not be present for all session participants. If a participant deletes a shared directory that contains a sub-module in the local setup of another participant, this sub-module will be deleted without any notice.

Furthermore, there are still some known bugs in the current release. Please have a look at the section Known Bugs.

Installation

Saros/I 0.2.1 requires

  • JDK 8 or newer
  • IntelliJ 2018.2.7 or newer

Saros/I can be installed from the JetBrains plugin repository or from disk. A detailed guide is given here.

Compatibility

The current release 0.2.1 is not compatible with the previous Saros/I releases (0.1.0 or 0.2.0) or other Saros plugins (like Saros/E).

Changes

  • Allow project module to be shared
    • The project module (i.e. the module that contains the project configuration and is used to load the project) can not be shared through Saros. The project configuration files will be ignored by the session.
  • Honor excluded resources
    • The Saros session now ignores resources marked as ‘excluded’ in the IDE. As a result, such resources and activities modifying them won’t be shared with other participants.
  • Fixed #696 - Color settings page not loading on the Windows platform
  • Fixed #703 - Fix “Use existing module” option failing on the Windows platform

Features

This alpha version provides most of the basic functionality of Saros. You can

  • add existing XMPP-accounts
  • start a session with another person
    • Sessions in Saros/I are currently limited to two participants (host and one client)
  • share exactly one module through Saros; the shared module must meet the restrictions described here
  • transfer the initial content of the module shared by the host to all participating clients
  • work on shared resources
  • create, delete, and move resources in the shared module
  • interact freely with non-shared resources
  • follow other participants of the session (follow mode)

For a guide on how to use Saros/I, have a look at our Getting Started page.

Restrictions

Some of the implemented features are still subject to some restrictions:

Module Restrictions

You can currently only share a single module. A module has to adhere to the following restrictions to be shareable through Saros:

  • The module must have exactly one content root.

Sharing a module will only share resources belonging to that module, not resources belonging to sub-module located inside a content root of the module. Creating such a sub-module during a session will lead to an inconsistent state that can not be resolved by Saros. See Known Bugs.

Working With Newly Created Modules

To share a newly created module, you will have to have saved your project at least once before trying to start a session. This is necessary as the module file for a new module is only written to disk the first time the module is saved.

You can check if the module file was written to disk by looking at the base directory of the module. It should contain a *.iml file with the same name as the module.

Resource Exclusion Options Are Not Shared

Saros/I does not currently share which resources are marked as ‘Excluded’ with other participants. This can lead to a situation where another participant creates a resource on their side that already exists as an excluded resource locally. This leads to a session desync. See Known Bugs.

Number of Participants

Currently, Saros/I is restricted to two-participant sessions, meaning you can only create session containing the host and a single client.

Missing Features

As this is only the first alpha release, there are still a lot of main features that are not yet implemented:

  • Multi-user sessions
  • Sharing multiple modules
  • Sharing whole projects
  • Display viewport annotations
  • Display file awareness annotations
  • Display cursor annotation
  • Display user color in Saros view
  • Adjustable Saros settings (besides colors)
  • Creation, management or deletion of XMPP accounts

Missing Secondary Features

These are features that are part of the functionality provided by Saros/E but are not seen as a crucial aspects of the plugin and are therefore have a lower priority:

  • Partial sharing
  • Saros help entry in menu-bar
  • Whiteboard
  • Chat

Known Bugs

There are some bugs in the alpha version of Saros/I that we are already aware of and that are going to be fixed in a later release. Some notable bugs are mentioned here. For a full overview, you can have a look at our issue tracker.

  • #116 - The position of local text selection is not updated correctly for closed files when text edits are received through Saros.
  • #223 - Deleting and then re-creating a file with the same name (or moving a file and then moving it back, etc.) causes the session to desynchronize irreparably, requiring a session restart.
  • #683 - Creating a file with an unknown file extension (or without a file extension) leads to a session desynchronization. Opening the file on the other side, choosing a file type, and then running the recovery might repair the session, but the state could also be irreparable, requiring a session restart.
  • #684 - Renaming the content root of the shared module leads to the content being deleted for all other participants.
  • #698 - Creating a submodule in a shared directory leads to a session desync.
  • #699 - Which resource are marked as excluded is not shared between participants.
  • #707 - Client line endings are overwritten with host line endings when starting a session.

Report a Bug

If you encounter any other bugs not mentioned above, we would appreciate it if you would report them to our issue tracker (after checking that they have not already been reported).

Our current bug tracker can be found on our GitHub page. Please make it clear that the issue is dealing with Saros/I.

When reporting a bug that concerns the plugin behavior, please provide the Saros log file (or all relevant excerpts) for a session where the bug was encountered. The log files can be found in the IntelliJ settings directory, which usually resides in the home directory under ~/.IdeaXXXXXXXX/ (“.IdeaXXXXXXXX” designates the used IntelliJ release; for IntelliJ IDEA Community Edition 2018.2, this would be .IdeaIC2018.2). The log files are located in ~/.IdeaXXXXXXXX/system/log/SarosLogs/.

If you are encountering IntelliJ IDEA errors connected to Saros (which will be displayed by a red, blinking symbol in the bottom right corner of the IntelliJ project view; the error can be viewed in more detail by clicking the symbol), please also include the IntelliJ IDEA logs. They are located in ~/.IdeaXXXXXXXX/system/log/ and are named idea.log (the log will be truncated at some point and older logs will be moved to idea.log.1, etc.). Please have a look at the contained timestamps to provide the correct file.

Before attaching any log files, please make sure to redact any private information that you do not wish to make publicly available.