Google Summer Of Code Eclipse Che 2019

This page reports the work done under Google Summer of Code'2019 for the Eclipse Che Project - Live Synchronization Skeleton for CoEditing in Che and Theia.

Introduction

Increasingly, distributed software development teams rely on online collaboration. The proposed project aims to implement the first skeleton of CoEditing in Eclipse Che and Theia. In this project, we tried to investigate how a VS Code extension can be deployed in Che's sidecar as a remote plugin. The motivation behind this was to keep the functionality of this VS Code extension separate from the operations of Che IDE and other plugins. In addition, the aim of the project was to develop a VS Code extension which can utilize Teletype libraries in order to create a pair programming environment in Che once the extension is executed in a sidecar as a remote plugin.

Milestones and Current Progress

I decided to organize the overall project in different sprints in order to address the above tasks.

• Exploring the Che-in-Che Development (Completed on June 12, 2019)

I started exploring different requirements required to run Eclipse Che on Minikube. These are Kubectl, Hypervisor - VirtualBox, Minikube, Helm, and Chectl. The main challenges faced during this phase were related to my device and memory issues. In addition, the Che version used by me was also having some issues. I have created a blog to explain how to run Eclipse Che on Minikube.

Blog Link: Running Eclipse Che on Minikube

• Running simple VS Code extension in Che as a remote plugin (Completed on June 28, 2019)

I developed a simple Helloworld VS Code extension and created a devfile to create a workspace in Che with this extension. The devfile has commands to build and package this extension. The devfile also has commands to install the extension as a remote plugin in the currently-running workspace Che-Theia instance. Furthermore, the extension can be installed as a remote plugin in the new hosted che-theia instance. I have created the blog to explain how a VS Code extension can be executed in hosted plugin:start instance mode.

Blog Link: Simple VS Code Extension in Eclipse Che as a Remote Plugin

code Link: GitHub Repository with devfile

• Developing VS Code Teletype extension for Che: Teletype Client (Completed on July 18, 2019)

In this sprint, I worked on teletype-client library in order to use it in a VS Code extension. I started from scratch building a simple VS code extension and then used teletype-client library inside it. In order to use, teletype-client library, type declaration file (.d.ts) was created and added to the project. The major challenges in this sprint were to figure out the alternative for the pusher-js library so that a pusher channel can be established from a node process running in VS Code. Also, the issues related to window reference and global fetch were resolved. At the end of this step, I was able to create a teletype client from VS Code extension.

code Link: GitHub Repository dev branch - Teletype Client commit

I also forked the teletype-client library and made some changes in order to resolve the issues related to pusher and use type declarations file created in my project.

code Link: GitHub Repository Forked from Atom/Teletype Client

• Developing VS Code Teletype extension for Che: Join Portal (Completed on August 9, 2019)

Next, Join Portal command along with the functionality was added so that any guest from VS Code extension can join the portal launched from Atom Teletype editor. This means it will allow the user/guest using Che to join the portal launched from Atom editor. In addition, validations were added so that user enter the right portal ID and they were further integrated with the portal module present in the teletype-client library. By the end of this step, validations and necessary calls to join portal were executing.

code Link: GitHub Repository dev branch - Join Portal commit

• Developing VS Code Teletype extension for Che: RTCPeerConnection and Guest-Portal Bindings (Completed on August 25, 2019)

In this sprint, I tried different packages in order to establish RTCPeerConnection between the client/guest created from VS Code extension and the portal/host launched from the Atom editor. Eventually, I decided to use wrtc package. I also used external sources available on GitHub to figure out the guest-portal and editor bindings as my main focus was on developing a simple extension with teletype libraries that work well in Che through a devfile. At the end of this step, as a host from VS Code I was able to join the portal created from Atom editor. As shown in the figures below, the connection is established between the guest(VS Code) and host(Atom editor). Furthermore, the messages are received on both the sides. There are still some challenges in this direction which I will be explaining in the section - Challenges and Future Work.

Steps to run the product (with current state)

1. Clone the repository and navigate to the project.

git clone https://github.com/Rijul5/vscode-teletype.git
cd vscode-teletype

2. Open the Atom editor, share the portal, and copy Portal ID.

3. Open the project inside VS the Code.

code .

4. Press F5 to compile the extension. It will open the extension development host.

5. Inside extension development host, press F1 or CTRL+SHIFT+P to launch the command Join Portal.

6. Prompt inbox will appear. Enter the Portal ID inside it and press enter.

7. You will join the portal as a guest.

Challenges and Future Work

• The editor and guest bindings need to be completed.

• Teletype-server library should be added to the above VS code extension to enable a user to create a headless server from Che so that guests can join the server from different editors.

• Synchronization challenges need to be addressed in a live collaboration environment where multiple language servers and editors exist.

Conclusions

During this assignment, I learned many technologies - Eclipse Che, Pusher, Atom-Teletype, VS Code Extensions, WebRTC, and Typescript. It was a great experience in developing a VS Code extension and explore different ways to deploy this extension in Che. The prime challenge in this research was to use teletype libraries in VS Code extension because most of the features used in teletype such as Pusher and WebRTC have direct dependencies on the browser. It is observed through this project that it is difficult to use WebRTC in VS Code extensions. The available packages such as node-webrtc and node-rtc-peer-connection are either hard to install, broken, or not maintained. The options such as including a wrtc binary for every operating system or spawning a whole new electron process are not ideal. However, in the end, we were able to establish the connection using wrtc and a variant of electron-wbrtc and now testing their behavior in Che. We would further want to bind the guest and editor so that a real-time pair programming environment can be created in Eclipse Che.