[mosh-devel] Application specific agents, side-channel file transfers and triggers

[Nathaniel Smith]

2012/4/25 Axel Beckert <abe at deuxchevaux.org>:
> Hi,
>
> some non-mosh answers as I think there already exist solutions.
>
> On Thu, Apr 26, 2012 at 12:23:54AM +0300, Mikko Ohtamaa wrote:
>> - It is pain to edit files on the server over terminal using terminal
>> editors like vi, emacs or nano if you are used to GUI editors like Sublime
>> Text or TextMate.
>
> Same counts vice versa. ;-)
>
>> - It would be nice that you could somehow invoke a local text editor to
>> edit remote files
>
> At least for Emacs users (Emacs can be used locally with a GUI, too!
> ;-), for at least a decade there is TRAMP: Transparent Remote Access,
> Multiple Protocols. See http://emacswiki.org/cgi-bin/wiki/TrampMode
> and https://www.gnu.org/software/tramp/ -- not sure if a similar thing
> exists for other editors, but at least DreamWeaver could edit stuff
> via SFTP or FTP, too.
>
>> As far as I know adding such application specific support in SSH would be
>> major pain
>
> SSH allows arbitrary port forwardings. I'd expect that this suffices
> for such stuff, so I don't seem the need to do such stuff application
> specific.

Tramp is great, but it would be very useful to have some way to do
callbacks *from* a remote server, inside a terminal session, *to* the
local client. For instance an oft-requested feature for ssh is some
command that you could type in the terminal to fetch a file back:

  remotehost:~/some/obscure/directory$ mosh-fetch the-file.txt
  <a file save dialog opens on your desktop>

I've even seen the ssh-agent protocol abused for this purpose, which
is... suboptimal.

-- Nathaniel