Remote development
For connecting to SSH hosts, WSL and containers, see Zed's remote development documentation. This page describes what ForgeKairos changes.
The bundled remote server
ForgeKairos ships a statically linked (musl) remote server for Linux x86_64 and uploads it when you connect, without asking. Because it does not depend on the host's glibc, it works on Linux hosts too old for VS Code's remote server; it has been tested with Ubuntu 18.04. WSL and Docker connections use the same server.
The remote server's files are named forgekairos-remote-server-*. When it cleans up old
files on the host, it deletes only ForgeKairos's own files, never those of the official
Zed.
One server process per host
Connections from one ForgeKairos to the same host share one server process, and each project is a session inside it. A session ends 10 minutes after its last connection; the process exits 60 seconds after its last session. When it starts, it removes its own leftovers: old state of sessions that are gone, server logs beyond the newest 5, and language server versions not used for 30 days.
Reconnecting
After a network drop or sleep, ForgeKairos reconnects automatically: it retries up to 15 times over about three minutes, and checks the connection as soon as the computer wakes up. A dead connection is detected within about 45 seconds.
Connecting takes fewer round trips: the host's environment is examined in one SSH command and the results are remembered.
Terminals that survive disconnects
On SSH hosts other than Windows, the remote server keeps the shell of each terminal alive
(terminal.remote_persistence.enabled, on by default). Commands keep running when the
connection drops or ForgeKairos is restarted. When you reconnect, the recent output (up to
4 MiB) is shown again and the terminal continues. The shell ends when you close the tab, or
after terminal.remote_persistence.detached_timeout_hours (24) without a terminal attached.
Tasks, agent shells, WSL, Docker and Windows hosts do not use this.
Hosts without internet access
With remote.relay_http_through_client (on by default), the host's downloads (language
servers, node, extensions, agent binaries) go through your machine. Language servers can
then be installed on a host that cannot reach the internet. The setting applies without
reconnecting.
When a language server or formatter is missing, a notification offers to install it
(dev_tools.suggest_missing). While connected to a remote host, it is installed on that host.
File watching on Linux
On Linux (locally and on remote hosts), ForgeKairos adds inotify watches only while all of the user's processes together use less than a quarter of the watch limit, and watches the remaining folders by polling. Builds and other tools on the host then do not run out of watches. Changes in polled folders appear a few seconds later.
Old git on the host
Git integration works with old versions of git on the host. See Git.
Git status of untracked files
In very large repositories, git.status_untracked_files set to "normal" or "no" makes git
status cheaper. Over SSH, the same value is used on the host.
File transfer
In an SSH project, the terminal's file transfer can use the remote host as its local side; the transfer commands then run on the host. See Terminal macros and sessions.