Any SparkleShare users out there? I need your thoughts. SS has worked great for 5 years, but not any more. I started an issue on the Sparkle Share Git hub (https://github.com/hbons/SparkleShare/issues/1877), no answer yet. It appears to me the SS documentation emphasis is on the "fool proof" setup for novices. The detailed docs for Linux veterans are, well, non existant so far as I can see.
Ubuntu 18.10 brought with it a new version of the sparkleshare package (3.28). It was a pretty big version jump, my old setup does not work anymore. The first sign of trouble was that on the first reboot after upgrade, the Sparkle program had forgotten the location of my shares. The Sparkle config panels opened asking if I wanted to configure some shares. Nothing I did there worked. Nothing changed on the server end, but new Sparkle just can't interact with it.
So far, I've tried to manually re-configure shares in the Sparkle gui to use the old projects I've tried to edit the projects.xml to do same. But it is not able to talk to the server.
I've looked into some details. The SS config directory moved from ~/.config/sparkleshare to ~/.config/org.sparkleshare.SparkleShare and the config files changed. In the previous version, the config file was config.xml but in new it is named projects.xml, although to my eye it appears they are the same inside.
I've still got the project repos under ~/Sparkleshare and I can use terminal to go in there and manually run git push and git pull to interact with the server. That makes me think the ssh keys are still OK.
However, Sparkle, no matter what I do, can't talk to the other computer.
When Sparkle fails to interact with other system, it gives a display that shows the path I want to connect to correctly, and it asks if I have given ClientID to the other host system. Frankly, I don't understand what it wants. I already confirmed the git ssh keys are good.
My SparkleShare host/server is an old system and it has been fine since 2013. Back in the day, I went on a big mission to set up gitolite and the antique Gitlab on that system, but since then I've lost details on what I did to make that thing work. There was no "dazzle" involved in that setup, I can assure you of that.
I wonder now if Sparkle Share assumes the 2 systems are on the same version of Sparkle Share.
Here's what I've learned. The new config folder is under ~/.config/org.sparkleshare.SparkleShare, file named "profile.xml".
The file layout is different than old, and the ssh key it creates is under the ssh folder.
It is not possible to manually fiddle the configuration, it seems necessary to run the SparkleShare GUI share configurator. If you try to edit profile.xml to be what you think you needed in old edition, the GUI will replace your file. I don't know how it knows that you are trying to fool it.
In order for Sparkle to communicate with the host server, it is necessary for you to install that ssh key that was automatically created as an authorized key on the other system. Depending on how other system is set up, that may be easy or hard. My other system was an old Gitlab/gitolite thing and it was difficult to get the key into the .ssh/authorized_keys file in correct format. On my system, that new key had to be placed into the /home/git/.ssh/authorized_keys file (my user for gitolite is named "git"). You can inspect the authorized_keys file, see the format of the old entry to make the new one go. Perhaps your setup is not so complicated, maybe you used that dazzle script or you have a running version of Gitlab.
Second, be aware of the following. Setting up your old share in the new program will cause a whole new download into a new folder. In the old ~/SparkleShare directory, the Sparkle will create new, different-looking directories. The new format will have the name of the server at the top level under ~/SparkleShare. My old one had 2 shares in 1 server, and the directory names were "work" and "manuscripts" under ~/SparkleShare. After getting the new framework going, the Sparkle created a whole new directory 'server.name.here" (with my server's name, of course) and then it pulled a fresh copy of the repos "work" and "manuscripts". The file space used is smaller because these have less history, I don't know why.
After this, I have a working version of SparkleShare again. In my experience, this new program is a little slower to sync. But it works OK.