5.2 KiB
This is update is primarily focused on internal reworks. It includes many changes are necessary going forward to allow for many future features to come. These new implementations can take into account everything learned so far and are more robust, especially when considering the long-term timeline.
The versioning scheme has also been changed to simplify version numbers. So we are going straight from 1.7 to 8.0!
If you're interested, make sure to check out the PTB repository at https://github.com/xpipe-io/xpipe-ptb to download an early version. The regular releases and PTB releases are designed to not interfere with each other and can therefore be installed and used side by side. If you are planning to use the PTB version, please don't try to link it up to your existing git vault though if you're using that feature. You can use a separate repository for that. It is intended to start out from zero with the connections in this PTB version to have a good coverage of all the workflows. Also, please don't use this test version for your production environments as it is not considered stable yet.
Judging from experience, there will be broken features initially. It will definitely take a while until XPipe 8.0 will be fully released. You can help the development effort by testing the PTB version and reporting any issues that you can find.
New terminal launcher
The terminal launcher functionality got completely reworked with the goal to make it more flexible and improve the terminal startup performance. You will quickly notice the new implementation whenever you launch any connection in your terminal.
Proxmox integration
There is now support to directly query all VMs and containers located on a Proxmox system via the pct and qm tools. The containers can be accessed directly as any other containers while the VMs can be accessed via SSH. In case no SSH server is running in a vm, you can also choose to set one up automatically within XPipe.
This feature will be available in the professional version in the full release.
Git For Windows environments
The git installation on windows it comes with its own posix environment, which some people use to make use of standard Linux functionalities on Windows if they have not moved to WSL yet. This update brings full support to add this shell environment as well via the automatic detection functionality.
Per-Vault settings
Previously all settings were stored on a per-system basis. This caused some problems with git vaults, as all relevant settings that should persist across systems were not synced. From now on, all options that should be the same on all synced systems are automatically included in the git vault.
Fish and dumb shells
Up until now, connecting to fish shells or various dumb shells you typically find in devices like routers and links, did not work as there was no proper support for them. The shell handling implementation has now been rewritten to support fish login shells (after some timeout). For SSH connections, there is now a toggle available in the professional version to designate the connection as dumb, i.e. it will only support terminal launching, nothing else.
File browser improvements
The file browser has been reworked in terms of performance and reliability. Transferring many files should now be faster. Any errors that can a curr are now handled better.
In terms of the interface, there is also now a progress indicator for files being transferred. For any file conflicts, there is now a new dialog to choose how to resolve any conflict when copying or moving files.
- Fix files in file browser not reloading content when trying to edit them multiple times in the session
- Add Open with ... action to open files with an arbitrary program
Settings rework
This update comes with a complete rework of the settings menu. Many options have been added and existing ones have been improved, with a focus on providing more control over security settings. Make sure to give them a read to discover new options.
PowerShell fallback
Some Windows admins disable cmd on their systems for some security reasons. Previously this would have caused XPipe to not function on these systems as it relied on cmd. From now on, it can also dynamically fall back to PowerShell if needed without utilizing cmd at all.
Bundled OpenSSH on Windows
One common problem in the past has been to fact that Microsoft ships relatively outdated OpenSSH versions on Windows, which do not support newer features like FIDO2 keys. Due to the permissive license of OpenSSH and its Windows fork, XPipe can bundle the latest OpenSSH versions on Windows. There is now an option the preferences menu to use the bundled OpenSSH version.
Dependency upgrades
All dependencies have been upgraded to the latest version, coming with a few fixes and some new features. In particular, the JavaFX version has been bumped, which now allows for native system theme observation and the usage of accent colors. Around 10 dependency libraries have been removed as they are no longer necessary.
Fixes
- Fix scaling issues on Linux by providing a separate scaling option
- Fix possible encoding issues on Windows with passwords that contained non-ASCII characters