The first is a partial sharing feature. When sharing a project, you now have the option to choose a subset of files instead of the sending the whole project. This will undoubtedly be of great benefit to those who have been collaborating on very large projects and have had to wait for the data transfer because your partner(s) don’t already have a copy. To share partially, go the Saros menu and select ‘Share projects’.

Also, we investigated some of the problems with networks that our users occasionally encounter and have introduced UPnP support for enabled routers. Users can add a port-mapping to try and get a better quality (SOCKS5) connection if it is blocked by default.

We’ve also improved the feedback during the invitation process. Once again, mammoth projects were causing problems, sometimes keeping invitees in the dark for a short while. It’s never fun to sit there wondering if your software is still doing something, so Saros will keep you reassured when it’s busy.

We hope you continue to enjoy using Saros. If you haven’t used it yet and you work with a team on Eclipse projects, why not give it a go? Get it from our update site or from SourceForge.net.

Feature-wise, we’ve taken advantage of Eclipse’s own security technology (part of the Equinox project) to securely store your data. Your details are held encrypted by default, but you can even go a step further and encrypt them by supplying your own password.

Look out for the next release (predicted end of June 2011) when we hope to include a new feature that helps all users who have extra large projects to share.

As a reminder, Saros still has all of the usual awareness information, including:

1. Marked files, which users with write-access have open (yellow) or visible (green).
2. Current text selected by another user.
3. Text changed by another user (by default, the last twenty edits are marked).
4. Current view scope of other users (i.e. what portion of a file can they see).

But the changes are concentrated in the Saros view, your main control panel for shared project collaborations.

As you can see, the view is divided into two main areas. The left pane contains the user information: your current username, who is in your current session, and a list of all the buddies you have. On the right is the on-line chat, where you can send messages to everyone in your current session. For existing users of Saros, we have tidied away many of the buttons and options into context menus, accessible when you right-click on a user.

This redesign is accompanied by a batch of other visual overhauls, including the setup and user account wizards. Here’s a sample of configuration wizard; much more informative and friendly, to ensure newbies can keep track of what’s going on.

Along with a whole raft of fixes and UI improvements, this makes the latest release of Saros a must have!

Among the fixes and improvements, version 11.2.25 introduces a new feature: multiple project sharing. Until now, Saros has pretty much been limited to sharing a single project, but now that limitation has been lifted. Saros can now share many projects from the beginning of a session, or even allow the user to add projects into the existing session. Those Eclipse users who have a “project of projects” should see great benefit from this new capability.

Another little bonus in this release is the ability to use your Google account with Saros (either gmail.com or googlemail.com).

Fresh out of the prototype stage, the whiteboard is a fully-functioning addition to the Saros feature set. However much it works, we feel it is still largely demonstrative at this point, a feature that positively invites further development dependent on the feedback our users provide. Right now, it gives users:

• Drawing with resizeable, selectable components (free-hand pencil, rectangle and eclipse)
• Undo capability
• Copy and paste
• Zoom and panning

And, most importantly, multiple users within a Saros session can collaborate remotely on the drawing. All you have to do is open the Saros Whiteboard view after sharing a project and sketch together!

Note: Because of the recent attack on SourceForge, Saros cannot be updated via its update site as of yet. Until SourceForge completes its repairs, you can download the jar files or the dropin from the download page.

To quote some interesting passages from the release notes:

The integration of version control support (VCS) into Saros has been given its final consolidation. Developers can now collectively work on a project under version control and Saros will manage the co-ordination between the participants whether they have VCS software or not.

Note that so far Saros is only compatible with the Subversion program. We hope to include other popular VC systems in later releases.

We have also improved the perceived latency of Saros by lowering the interval time between which your updates are sent to your collaborators. In the unlikely event that this causes overload problems for the XMPP server, it can now be configured to a higher value.

Whereas Saros used to enforce the latency of transmitted edits itself (present out of courteousness; after all, Saros can use public servers and we wouldn’t want to overload them) we are now passing that power onto you. The rate at which your edits are transmitted to others in your session is now configurable via the advanced preferences, which now comes pre-set to a lower value to give you a more responsive feel. Use your fearsome new power wisely!

Get Saros today from http://dpp.sf.net/update, or visit http://www.saros-project.org for more information.

Saros account management

This feature makes it much more manageable if you have a number of profiles to switch between. What’s more, you can switch between the accounts via a drop-down on the roster view. How much simpler could it be?

In addition to this, the new-look chat view is also available. Much more pleasing to the eye, I’m sure you’ll agree, and it even notifies you when someone else in the room is typing (notice the little pencil icon in the image below).

New-look Saros chat

And finally, as you might notice from the session view in that screenshot, there is now the option in Saros to change the default colour assigned to you, should you wish to change it to something more meaningful to you, or something just plain nicer.

Go over to our project website to get Saros today. If you already have Saros, update to version 10.10.29 now! Learn more about how to use it at the official web-page.

Thanks to all those who took part! Maybe I should take another poll: who has the best logo, Eclipse or Git?

Edit: See the previous post to find out why Subversion is not included in the results.

You may be familiar with Saros — our plug-in which provides distributed collaborative editing in Eclipse — and you may even know that Saros now features version control system (VCS) integration, so that all participants can work directly on the project repository together. At the moment, this feature only supports Subversion, but thanks to some clever architecture we can easily chuck in a bit of new code to support any VCS we like. But our resources are limited, and in lieu of a contributor coming forward and writing their own code (which is always welcome!), we have to pick and choose which VCS to support next.

To help us decide, please take a few seconds for this poll. The most popular VCSes are included, but feel free to add others.

[polldaddy poll=3867664]