Live-share: Allow guests to use source control diffing features in VS and VS Code

[Chuxel]

Note that developers starting the collaboration session (hosts) do not have this limitation. It is specific to guests joining a session.

Currently source control features like those found in the VS Team Explorer and the VS Code Source Control tabs do not function for guests joining a collaboration session as they rely on local files to work. In addition, source control diffing features suffer from similar problems regardless of where they are initiated.

We should consider doing the extra work required to allow guests to use source control diffing in VS and VS Code to help owners isolate issues if there is sufficient interest in the scenario.

[lostintangent]

This has now been addressed in the latest Live Share release! 🔥In VS Code, this works out of the box (guests will see a read-only view of the Source Control tab), and in VS, you'll need to use VS2019 Preview + the Pull Requests extension. Let us know if you have any questions/issues. Thanks again for the feedback!

[rojopolis]

I see that this feature was released in https://github.com/MicrosoftDocs/live-share/releases/tag/v0.3.1011 however the feature either isn't available, or it's unclear how to enable it. I don't see any configuration option to enable this. Do I need to (further) RTFM, or is this not working?
I'm writing an article on remote collaboration with VSCode today and I'd love to be able to include this feature!

[lostintangent]

@rojopolis We just realized that we forgot to move this feature out of the experimental stage. We're going to update this now and release a fix. In the meantime, if you set the liveshare.features setting to experimental, then you'll see the list of changed files + diffs show up on the guest side via the Source Control tab. Apologies for the confusion on our end!

[lostintangent]

@rojopolis We just shipped the update to the marketplace that enables shared source control state with guests. Apologies for that mistake, and let us know if you run into any other issues. Thanks!

[lukepighetti]

Hi there! I was using VSCode last night as a guest and was unable to see file diff in my editor. Is this available on the left side of the text window in all files like I'm accustomed to? Or is this only available in the Source Control tree. Does the host have to be up to date?

[kmasuyama]

I noticed that the guest source control does not update while the host is inactive. I was testing the diffing behavior using a remote host via remote desktop. Specifically, the guest source control did not reflect updates while:

• the vscode window on the host was minimized in an active remote desktop session
• the host vscode window remained open but another window was active
• the remote desktop window to the host computer was minimized/closed

It did work when

• the host vscode window remained selected in an open (but not selected) remote desktop window

steps:

• open remote desktop and start live share session
• connect from local pc
• create one of the above scenarios
• change file from local pc and save -> source control panel does not change
• select vscode window on remote -> source control panel on local pc changes

I'm trying to use this as a stopgap method for remote collaborative editing until #2128 is implemented, and it'd be great to see diffs without having a remote desktop session open all the time.

Thanks!