Support sharing binary files

[nietras]

Currently, it does not seem Live Share works for editor tabs other than code/text. It would be great if at least sharing the look of an image tab would be possible. I.e.

• Start Live Share in Visual Studio for user A
• Open Live Share by user B
• User A opens an image e.g. Image.png in Visual Studio.
• User B cannot see this image or editor tab for the image

Live Share 1.0.17.0 in Visual Studio 2017

[cyberbiont]

I think that a warning should appear that sending binary files over Live Share is not supported. Otherwise people can be confused.
See #3308

[piperod]

I am trying to visualize an image output from a live share session, but the file is not shown properly. Also when I tried to donwloaded it local it does not work.

[dominikheinz]

@cyberiont @fubaduba

Are there any plans to add this in the near future?
I am currently working on a project with some other people over liveshare, where images are produced as output.
Currently only the host can view the output, but no other participant in the session.

I really think this would be a great (and needed) addition for a good workflow.

[cmprmsd]

Hey @lostintangent @daytonellwanger,

Do you have any news on the discussions you planned for the new year on this topic? :)
Thanks in advance!

[daytonellwanger]

@Davsterl as well.

I think this is a great addition to Live Share, and technically it's pretty easy to achieve. The only barrier is the compliance/regulatory hurdles to overcome, which I don't have a full understanding of.

[cmprmsd]

Hey!

I tried getting around this limitation.
In Markdown there is a way to embed images with the data:base64 attribute. While this works, it bloats the file immensely as the full picture would have to be embedded into the text file.

There is a real need for binary transfers. If there are barriers regarding regulatory issues, maybe you could limit the binary support to just png or image files for example.

I hope there will be progress soon. Thumbs pressed!

[H8to]

I hope we can push this issue forward to implement the feature sooner than later.

Meanwhile, is this a clientside only topic or does the live-share protocol need to be changed?

I would like to work around this issue until it might get solved in the future.

Big thanks for the discussion so far!

[daytonellwanger]

Hey @H8to , you could always work around this by syncing binary files yourself with an extension that adds Live Share support via our extensibility API. We'll provide the connectivity layer, and you just need to provide business logic on top.

... although this seems to circumvent the legal reasons why we don't support binary files today 🤔 @Davsterl @fubaduba

[H8to]

Hey, I had a look into this over the weekend, but struggle with it as I'm not a developer 😅
My last hope is the implementation of this feature as it allows for

• copying images into liveshare sessions from the clipboard
• working on LaTeX documents with several people at the same time.

Same will be true for markdown, even if we would be fine with pngs being allowed.

Please give it another look 🤓

[lostintangent]

This is now resolved and will be included in the upcoming Live Share release. Thanks!

[fjenett]

@lostintangent … as of today this still does not seem to be fixed. Can you give an update? Should i open a new issue?

[L-Figgins]

Today, I just wasted two hours until realizing that the images were in fact tainted from myself moving them to a new directory during a session ( I did not start the session).

[joey-kilgore]

Going to continue the echoes for an update. Was working with binary files and spent hours trying to fix an issue that occurred only because of using this feature to transfer the file.

[eiis1000]

Still seems to not be working - trying to open an image in live share gives "An error occurred while loading the image. Open file using VS COde's standard text/binary editor?" And doing so gives a quite small file of binary bullshit, a la <ш�4y����*����xƭ�Z-�&�z�"�}��.

[WEEZOOKARP]

still a problem for me not even pasting the bytes from the image and pasting them into the file works