Cyberduck/WinSCP/(something for Linux) for 'hack users

[fu]

Idea! So, one of the barriers to starting out with dreamhacks is that initial stage of needing to learn how to SSH into the 'hack, and then figuring out how to navigate the filesystem/edit files with a nongraphical text editor, plus grappling with latency for each keystroke if you have a slow connection.

rb and I got to talking and she suggested using Cyberduck, which is a Mac-specific FTP/SCP client which lets you ssh into the remote system with a graphical user interface, and edit the files locally with any client you want (hopefully one you're familiar with!). When you save, it sends the file to the remote server, so you only suffer from latency at that step. due@IRC suggests WinSCP for Windows. I'm not familiar with what you can use on Linux, but I'm pretty sure there's something!

Any thoughts? Any suggestions for alternative clients, or a client for Linux? (Oooh maybe a good thing to eventually direct into the wiki)

We'd still need to teach how to SSH in and use the commandline in order to generate the patchfile, but that might be less intimidating, if we can put it off until after they've done code and seen the effect without all these setup steps getting in the way.

Comments

[cesy]

WinSCP worked well for me.

[ninetydegrees]

+1

It's multi-language. It's got two display modes, Commander and Explorer, so anybody familiar with Windows Explorer or an FTP client will know how to use it. And you can specify which text editor you want it to work with (that's about the only preference you have to set BTW).

[catness]

I think that Linux users are not intimidated by the command line ;)

Anyway, one possible client is Konqueror - the standard KDE file manager which supports remote hosts through the FISH ("fish://user@host") protocol.

[yvi]

It's not intimidation so much as speed and convenience. I'd love to work in a graphical editor rather than vim, but remote mounting of the Dreamhack makes everything really slow.

[rich]

If you use GNOME rather than KDE, the default file manager (Nautilus) supports SFTP, you can just type "sftp://user@host/home/user/" etc and it's as if you're browsing your local filesystem.

[pixel]

What about sshfs? Would work for cli and gui then. I haven't got a clue what speed would be like.

[catness]

I suppose it depends... sshfs is sluggish for me even between home and work, but it could work well for other people. When I'm away from the office, I do all the development on my local machine and use scp to copy files to/from. I think it's also easier and more efficient than graphic file managers.

[denise]

I use BBEdit for the Mac; the full version integrates a ftp/sftp client, so you can edit remote files locally. The only problem is that it's expensive...

[foxfirefey]

Their freebie TextWrangler lets you edit files over SFTP, though!

[perquisitor_omnia]

I know its not a full gui experience, but on linux you could use the sftp command to download the file(s) you want, edit them locally in whatever, and then upload them. It works like a CLI ftp client, so if text mode is still a pain, the suggestions about Nautilus and Konqueror sound lovely. For that matter, you could use the scp command if you know the exact path of what you want.

[vlion]

jEdit lets you edit over SSH.

emacs has tramp, which also lets you edit over SSH.

[thorfinn]

All sounds good - the only concern I'd have is windows vs unix line ending issues.

I've seen endless confusion and annoyances due to people opening up an LF line end file on windows, editing it, then uploading it with CRLF line ends.

So whatever instructions you're going to have for Windows people, make sure they talk about that, and/or make sure it doesn't matter whether the files being edited have LF or CRLF.