SeaDrive 2.0.4 is available

Hi @Jonathan,

I’ve been testing the previous versions pretty intensively and, surprise, I did so again with this new release :wink:

To begin with: SeaDrive 2.0.4 (for Windows) is pretty great. During my tests, I did mean things to this newest addition to the SeaDrive family and it did well!

I repeated all the tests that I had done with SeaDrive 2.0.2 and 2.0.3. The reactions of SeaDrive 2.0.4. that I observed were almost always what I wanted/expected to see.

There are only a few observations that I want to share.
A.) When uninstalling SeaDrive, the local cache is not removed/purged. Is this the desired behavior?

Ideally, the admin is prompted: “Do you want to remove the local cache?”

B.) The problem that one or several category folders (“My libraries”, “Share with me”, …) get duplicated when changing languages is gone. YES!!

There is one caveat though: When a Windows Explorer window is open when changing the language, the labels of the category folders are not refreshed and remain in the original language (until you close that window). When you click on one of the category folders before the navigation bar is refreshed, you get a nasty error message “Path not available.”

The screenshot below exemplifies this situation: The client was set to German, then I switched to English, the navigation bar was not refreshed and I clicked on one of the category folders with a German label. Bamm, error message!
grafik

My idea to prevent this problem: Could the client require the user to close all Explorer windows prior to changing the language?

I realize that this problem will not happen often because the language is rarely changed. But maybe in combination with C.) below, this may be more interesting.

C.) When one logs out of the SeaDrive account with SeaDrive open in an Explorer windows and answers the question “Remove local cache?” with “Yes” , the SeaDrive node is removed from the navigation bar, but the node’s label in the address row changes to “SeaDrive (32-Bit)” and all the category folders are still available in the main part of the window. When you then click one of the category folders, the SeaDrive node is repinned to the navigation bar and there is no way to remove it.

grafik

If the user was forced to close all Explorer windows when changing the language or logging out of an account, the problem described in B.) and C.) would be avoided. The biggest benefit: You’d limit the risk of having an abandoned Seafile node in the nav bar.

D.) So far, my comments were just nice-to-haves. Now comes the one real issue that I am having with SeaDrive 2.0.4: The “Always keep on this device” and the “Free up space” function are not as reliable as they could be. 80% of my tests worked flawless, but in the remaining 20% I encountered one of these two problems:

  • When downloading a files, all files in the library would be downloaded, but the status sign for the library would remain “sync pending” (see screenshot below)
  • When freeing up space, all but but one/two files would be deleted in the library/folder. But because of this one/two files that refused to get deleted, the status icon of the library would remain “sync pending” - a second “free up this space” didn’t help (see screenshot below) When I opened the file by double-clicking on it, the status wouldn’t change either.

grafik
grafik

I had a feeling that the problem with the freeing up space most often happend with ZIP files. But as shown in the screenshot, it also happened with other files.

When I then repeated the download/free-up process (or the other way round), the problem was usually solved. But you don’t want to do things twice.

Bottom line:
I’ve been using SeaDrive 2 in production since 2.0.2, but with a bad feeling. This is the first version that feels almost ready for mass deployment.

Two features high up on my wishlist are these two: :wink:
i.) Context menu integration to create sharing links straight from Windows Explorer
ii.) Ability to not show “Shared with all” and “My libraries” (https://forum.seafile.com/t/seadrive-2-0-3-is-released/12212/14?u=rdb)

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