Desktop client has less releases and is behind master

Current release of desktop client is v2.3.3 from last november.
ownCloud client has reached version v2.4.1 and has some interesting features and fixes.

Does anyone know the roadmap of the client?

Best regards and happy private clouding,
rakekniven

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They work on getting client-side encryption into the client (https://github.com/nextcloud/client/pull/87).
@camila @rullzer @jospoortvliet

Ok, is there a roadmap available?
No milestones on GitHub.

I think the seperate Nextcloud desktop client is a bit understaffed so to say. As long as there are no real distinctive features (of which E2EE is the most important), there is no real pressure to make a fully dedicated client with all the latest features available because the Owncloud version still works (if they are needed at all).

Ok, using ownCloud client as well. There is no guarantee to have it working after next update and I just want to know what the reason is to have less releases.

Same for me. Owncloud started to implement delta-sync, Nextcloud comes with E2E encryption, so serious differences can be expected soon (though both are optional features).

I hope the Open Source features will be implemented into the Nextcloud client too. Aside from that, the Owncloud client has a better update system/infrastructure (on Windows and official repositories for Linux at least).

Looks the same for me. The desktop client is currently not the main task/project at Nextcloud. They do a lot of great other stuff btw. As long as the ownCloud client works it is ok for me. Like to see synergy of both projects.
@tflidd Do you have a link for delta-sync?

Not much, they have a tag for it and a dedicated branch:

They have merged the server part already into the master branch (https://github.com/owncloud/core/pull/29404).

For the client, I haven’t seen a packaged testing version (you can build it yourself). And it only works, if bytes are added to a file (not when changed or moved within a file):
https://github.com/owncloud/client/issues/179#issuecomment-363788305

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Interesting detail.

See first blog post about it:
https://owncloud.org/news/welcome-delta-sync-for-owncloud/

Let’s see if it comes in a new major release (as they say) or in a bugfix release - they backported some big stuff already.

Either way, sure, we can merge it too, the volunteer contributor who wrote the delta-sync already looked at doing it for Nextcloud, too.

Meanwhile we have internal builds for a new E2EE client, we’ll release it as soon as it has gotten a bit of internal testing. Already found a bug in the Android E2E implementation :wink:

So stay tuned!

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Hello Jos,

do you have some download numbers for us? Desktop client compared to mobile clients?
During the first *cloud years the client had a rapid development and a lot releases.
Now it is more quiet and I like to understand the priority the client has for the Nextcloud project.

The desktop client has a far higher priority now than a year ago - that’s why we work on it a lot :wink:

But none of that work has been released, it will be in the next major release (2.5). We decided to skip the current series (2.4) as it wasn’t very stable and had some horrible UI stuff we wanted to fix first. We now have 2 people working on making E2E stable and 1 person working on the UI, notifications and other features. Patience :wink:

And yeah, the E2E - it is merged now, so you can build master if you want to try it. We’re working on getting automatic building infra up but hey, if somebody does that or wants to do it, he/she’d be welcome :smiley:

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Hey Jos,

thanks for your thoughts.
I will test it and provide feedback as soon as there are pre releases.

Cheers

The guys at OC added a nice feature VFS to their alpha of v.2.5
Would be really cool to get this in the Nextcloud world as well.

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Will be a cool feature for devices with low disk space (like all these junk notebooks with 32GB disk space), but if this is in alpha state it would be better to wait until it matured enough.

I have yesterday upgraded to nc 13.0.2 and set up e2e with the android app, created an encrypted folder and load up a test file. In the web ui the directory is marked as encrypted.
So I build yesterday the Linux desktop client on Debian Sid, but the desktop client doesn’t work with the encryption, no password question and the file from the test folder is just downloaded. I’ven’t found a way to force it, any hints to this?

It’s the development version. Best is, to ask them directly by opening an issue on github. Nobody here has seen a desktop client with E2E :disappointed_relieved:

Well, actually there is one (for Windows and Linux at least): https://download.nextcloud.com/desktop/prereleases/E2E/Linux/

There is a new preview out for testing:

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