It’s about time we shared the latest developments of the Nuxeo Desktop Synchronization tool ( or Nuxeo Drive)! Today, I will give you an overview of what has been done in the last few months and what‘s coming next.
10,000 Feet Overview
Nuxeo Drive is now in a stabilization phase, with several improvements and bug fixes during the past few months. The major bug fixes have been around Direct Edit and in the synchronisation algorithm. The major improvements have been around performance, and improving the code (both server side and client side) for better scalability. It is now faster to synchronising content and requires less resources on the server.
This feature is still optional (in the configuration panel of Nuxeo Drive’s client) and will not be available for all platforms/configuration/formats.
In future, the major features will be built around: - File system decoration - Authentication Pluggability Improvements
About the Release Cycle
Nuxeo Drive client is released approximately every two weeks. The release process is as follows: - A new beta version is published and tested during 2 weeks - If the beta version is validated, it is pushed to the production channel and Drive instances with auto-update enabled are updated automatically.
The last released versions are:
- Beta version: 2.1.707
- Last production version: 2.1.623
The numbers indicate the date of the release of the 2.1 Drive version: 2.1.623 was on June, 23th.
The 2 weeks cycle can be slightly adapted, depending on bug fixes or improvements to be released.
Major Improvements
“Direct Edit” (formerly “Drive Edit”) Direct Edit is the ability to edit a file just by clicking on it from the Web UI.
Noteworthy improvements have been released that includes managing:
- Files with Filename containing an accent
- Notes
- Conflicts when saving (asking the user which document he wants to keep)
- Unsaved documents. If the desktop gets accidently switched off, the unsaved documents are uploaded again.
We also did some work on auto-locking. However, it is not possible to push this feature as a supported feature in general because there are too many different behaviours depending on the nature of the file. As a consequence, we kept it as a “bonus” on some file formats. The user is notified when the file is locked, so if he/she is not notified that would mean the file is not locked. The user can still do it manually by right clicking from the desktop.
Remote Watcher / New API / Remote Scan
Thanks to the new remote scan API: - The initialization of Nuxeo Drive now scales on a big hierarchy and is faster - The number of children synchronized in a folder is no longer limited to 1000
Technically, when performing a remote scan, the descendants of a synchronization root are now fetched by a batch of 100 documents. Remote scan execution is now optimized and takes less time. Tests show that the durations are 4 times quicker.
Application Update / Deployment
Auto deployment has been made easy on Windows workstations with the use of a command line or MSI (more information can be found on our documentation site here).
Regarding auto updates, it is now possible to disable this feature on your Nuxeo Drive client. In the configuration interface, there is a new checkbox “Automatically update Drive” that will be useful for users who have not admin rights on their computer. This behavior can also be configured in the init file facilitating bulk deployment.
User Interface
More information for the user is available with explicit messages in the following use cases: - Edit a locked or read-only document locally - Access metadata through right click on a file not managed by Nuxeo Drive - Impossible to reach the server - The Drive addon is not installed on the server
Moreover, Ignoring errors is now possible, making these documents unsynchronized.
Synchronizer
Some work has been done around duplication issues:
- Duplication on text/plain files, notes were imported as files
- Reconciliation of duplicated files
- Reconciliation of the filename when the drive client is suspended
- Duplication when moving file while being accessed
Others
- Nuxeo Drive is now available as a Python package
- Document locking / unlocking are taken into account by Drive