codemp

This project is heavily inspired by Microsoft Live Share plugin for Visual Studio (Code). While the functionality is incredibly good, I often find issues or glitches which slow me down, and being locked to only use Visual Studio products is limiting. I decided to write my own solution, and to make it open source, so that any editor can integrate it with a plugin.

Design

Client/Server

While initially a P2P system seemed interesting, I don't think it would easily scale with many users (due to having to integrate many changes on each client). I decided to build a client/server architecture, with a central "Workspace" managed by the server application and multiple clients connecting to it. Each client will only have to care about keeping itself in sync with the server (remembering local-only changes and acknowledged changes), leaving the task of keeping track of differences to the server.

Plugins

This software will probably be distribuited as a standalone binary that editors can use to connect to a "Workspace". A dynamic library object might also be a choice. Each editor plugin must be responsible of mapping codemp functionality to actual editor capabilities, bridging codemp client to the editor itself. The client should be able to handle a session autonomously.

Text Synchronization

A non destructive way to sync changes across clients is necessary. I initially explored CRDTs, but implementation seemed complex with little extra benefits from "more traditional" approaches (Operational Transforms). This has to be investigated more.

Roadmap

• Initial design choices
• Simple GRPC server with tonic
• Simple neovim client with RPC/msgpack
• Implementing core protocol routes
• Simple neovim client capable of displaying other person cursor
• Implement OTs / CRTDs for sharing file deltas
• More clients (VSCode? JetBrains IDEs?)
• LSP functionality bridged to guests from host?
• Full remote development suite by keeping the project repo on a server?