Troubleshooting

Technical Questions

Setting up

Why is updating Saros over the Eclipse Update mechanism so slow?

We think it is basically a problem with Eclipse, which keeps checking for updates to all plug-ins that you have installed. To work around this problem, uncheck "Contact all update sites during install to find required software" in Eclipse's installation dialog.

When I try to use the update site, I get a certificate error. What can I do?

The Eclipse error message reads something like "An error occured while collecting items to be installed" and "unable to find valid certification path to requested target".

In December 2016, Sourceforge (where we host our JAR files) introduced forwarding to HTTPS servers which are certified by "Let's Encrypt" certificates. Older Java versions (below Java 8u101 and Java 7u111) do not recognize "Let's Encrypt"'s root certificate and this results in said error message.

You may use our secondary update site which is hosted by Heroku: https://get-saros.herokuapp.com/eclipse. Alternatively, you can either update your Java installation to compatible version, or follow these instructions to add the root certificate manually. (Also refer to the bugtracker entry in SourceForge -- we are not the only project suffering from this issue.) Alternatively, you can download the dropin archive and follow the instructions for installation as dropin.

I cannot connect with my jabber account?

Go to Eclipse -> Saros -> Preferences -> General -> Network Connections and make sure, that there are no proxy settings checked.

I cannot access public servers from my location. Can I still use Saros over the local network somehow?

Yes. See the Installation and setup page for information on setting up your own local XMPP server.

Editing

The updates I'm getting from others in the session seem to arrive slowly.

All edits go through a server. Because it can be used with a public server, Saros attempts to be courteous and sends edits out in intervals (a few hundred milliseconds), so the server is not overloaded. However, everyone in your session can reduce this interval in order to remove the perceived latency. Just go the Saros advanced preferences and enter a lower value in the box labelled "Interval (in milliseconds) between outgoing edits to peers".

I don't want to see the selections and/or contributions of my participants highlighted.

The corresponding setting is not specifically Saros related and is therefore not located in Saros' own preferences. Saros uses so called "Annotations" for highlighting your partners' activities and contributions.

Simply open your Eclipse Preferences ("Window" > "Preferences") and navigate to "General" > "Editors" > "Text Editors" > "Annotations" (or enter "Annotations" in the search field in the upper left corner).

The list of "Annotation types" should contain several entries with the "DPP" prefix. If you want to disable the highlighting of your partners' selections, click the corresponding entry (e.g. "DPP Selection of buddy 1") and uncheck the box next to "Text as [Highlighted]" — you may want to repeat this step for all five buddies. The same goes for the "contributions" (that portion of source code someone authored).

Network issues

I keep getting Mediated Socks5 or slower IBB connections. What am I doing wrong?

Troubleshooting Socks5 Bytestream Establishment

If you keep getting Mediated Socks5 Bytestreams or In-Band Bytestreams, other peers cannot connect to you directly (cannot create a TCP connection to you). What can you do to improve chances?
  • Your default Socks5 proxy port (7777) might be in conflict. You can change the Socks5 proxy port in the Saros network preferences.
  • Your firewall might block connection requests for/from Saros. You can configure your firewall to allow Saros (Eclipse, Java) communication.
  • If you are connected through a Universal Plug and Play compatible gateway device, you can enable Saros to perform a port mapping for the computer it is running on and make it reachable from the outside. The UPnP option can be enabled in Saros network preferences. If your gateway device is not found, it might require enabling UPnP support as well.
  • If your gateway is not UPnP compatible, it may be possible to manually configure a port mapping for the Socks5 proxy port and your private IP to be reachable from the outside. Consult your gateway (e.g. Router) manual for port mapping or sometimes labelled virtual servers.

What might stop you from using Socks5:

Some factors might prevent you from using S5B. Lets have a quick look at the S5B protocol when you want connect a buddy.
  • Your Saros requests your connected XMPP server for an available proxy.
  • Your Saros detects its local and global network addresses.
  • Your Saros sends the list of your addresses and the proxy address (if any) to your buddy's Saros.
  • Your buddy's Saros attempts to create a TCP connection to any of the addresses you provided.
    • If your buddy connected to one of your addresses, you'll get a direct S5B connection.
    • If your buddy couldn't connect to your addresses but to a proxy and so does your Saros, you will get a mediated S5B connection.
    • Otherwise the S5B connection fails.
Saros actually attempts the S5B creation in both directions, so both sides attempts to connect each other. This improves chances of one peer connect to the other one. You can check your contact list to see which bytestream type is established between you and a contact (if any).
 
For further information check out data connections in Saros on our networklayer page here.

Known Issues

About data transfer

  • Transfering large amounts of data during session initiation (project synchronization) can take a lot of time. Do as much of the synchronization via your version control repository as you can to keep session initiation fast by using "copy of existing project" when accepting a session invitation.

  • Refactoring operations can produce a huge number of events to be transfered by Saros, which may take very long and can thus be confusing for participants.

  • In particular, on-the-fly refactorings such as 'rename' perform one such (possibly large) set of operations for each keypress. It is wise to avoid these operations.

Making your session mates aware of your actions

  • Be aware that Saros transfers only the text editor pane. When you use other elements of Eclipse, e.g. structure browsers or the HTML browser, your session mates cannot automatically see this. Thus, talking aloud about the things that you are doing there is probably required to make them aware of your actions.

Eclipse editor technicalities

  • You and your session mates should use the same editor settings regarding formatting and encoding; in particular regarding TAB width, TAB/spaces handling and character encoding.

About Eclipse plugins

  • Saros is compatible with most but not all other Eclipse plugins. See also our incomplete list of compatible plugins.

  • If you are sharing a project which is managed by a source code management system such as Subversion, make sure that all participants have compatible versions of the SCM plugins installed. Otherwise Saros might corrupt the version information or transfer revision data unnecessarily.