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SFTP

Introduction

With the release of codelite 5.3 a new plugin was introduced: the SFTP plugin. This plugin hooks into codelite 2 new tabs as seen in the screenshots below:

One tab is placed in the workspace view, the other in the output view:

With this new plugin, one can accomplish the following:

• Connect to a remote site over SSH and
  • Browse it
  • Open files
  • Rename files
  • Delete files and directories
  • Create directories
  • Edit and Save files directly from within codelite

Another functionality that was introduced with this plugin is Workspace Mirroring.

File Browsing with SFTP

In order to get started with the SFTP plugin you need to setup an SSH account. To do this, you can either click on the Open Account Manager button in the SFTP toolbar at the top of the SFTP tab (in the workspace view) or from the main menu: Plugins -> SFTP -> Open SSH Account Manager (see following screenshot)

Once clicked, the "SSH Account Manager" dialog is displayed

To add a new account:

• click on the Add button
• In the 'Add Account' dialog that appears, the following are compulsory fields:
  • Account Name - the name of the account, can be any string
  • Host / IP - the address of the remote machine to which you want to connect
  • Port - the port of the remote server SSH service (the default is 22)
  • Username - the login username

Note that the Password field is optional. If not provided, the SFTP plugin will try to connect either using SSH keys (the one that is stored under ~/.ssh folder) or via anonymous login.

You can try out your new account connection with the Test Connection button. When everything is OK, click OK and dismiss the dialog.

Now that we have setup an account, it should appear in the drop-down list in the SFTP explorer tab. To start browsing your files:

• Select your account
• Click on the connect button

Once connected you can start browsing your files on the remote server (open, edit save etc).

Workspace Mirroring

Workspace mirroring is a way to upload your changes from your local machine into a remote machine in the background. So basically every change you make on your local machine is uploaded into the mirrored workspace. It is especially useful in cases where you want to test code that was compiled and tested successfully on your local machine, on a second machine which runs a different OS without first committing your changes to the source control (git, svn etc).

How does it work?

Prerequisites

• You will need to have your workspace setup on both machines (i.e. the sources should be on both machines)
• The remote machine should have an SSH service
• On your local machine, you should have a running CodeLite instance

Setup

• Define an SSH account for connecting to the remote machine (read the previous section to see how)
• Right click on your workspace icon in the tree view and select the option Workspace Mirroring -> Setup

• In the dialog that pops up, select the proper account, set an initial path (e.g. /) and click on the 'Connect' button
• Browse and select your remote workspace file and click OK

• From this point on, every 'save' you do to a local machine will be uploaded to its corresponded file on the remote server

• To disable the mirroring, right click on the workspace icon and select Workspace Mirroring -> Disable