xpipe-io
Feature request: more connection actions with multiple selections
Hi,
Currently when ones select multiple connections, the only options that appears at the bottoms is Open. However it would nice to have other options there as well. Ones that comes to my mind (in order of preference):
- Category
- Color
- Freeze
- Remove (after confirmation :) )
- Add notes
More complicated would be "Export" to share selected connections between X-Pipes users (or just export to ssh config, where applicable) but that sounds like a huge task. The export sounds like a nice feature but it depends if there is a need for it (I personally don't need it).
The category move makes sense, I will check that is possible.
The color in my opinion shouldn't be possible as it's also possible to configure a color for a whole category. That makes it look cleaner compared to just coloring every connection in the same color. I just tried that, didn't look that great.
Freeze is only really intended to create some kind of templates, it's not really meant to apply to a lot of connections. Wethers the use case for freezing many connections?
Remove is possible, but how often do you really need to remove connections in bulk? Right now, removing a root entry will also delete all children, so this can be done quickly.
Notes in my opinion differ per system, so I don't see how it would make sense to add the same notes to multiple ones
Ad color - agree as long as one doesn't want to use different colors within single category
Ad freeze - agree its not that important
Ad remove - this is not a behavior I'm seeing right now. Removal of a category makes all connections to go one category up. One of the use cases here is that the environment (several nodes of K8s, several SSH servers) no longer exists or is no longer my responsibility. Again low priority.
Ad notes - lowest priority but an example might be some HW notes regarding bare metal servers, contact information, ticket no. etc.
The idea is to add a bit of flexibility in connections edit. However I'll be not fight for it with tooth and nail ;)
You can still use different colors within a colored category. Colors assigned to individual connections override the category color setting.
By remove I meant when you delete the top-level connection entry, all associated children connections will also be deleted. If you delete a category, this is not done. Mainly to give users the option to easily reorganize stuff without breaking something. How often does it happen that you need to delete many (5+) top-level servers at once? If that happens frequently, I can think about it.
Ad colors - agree. That's why i thought that the ability mark several connections (that are already within the category) to apply color or icon would be a nice touch.
Ad remove - I see my mistake. However this is one of the options that doesn't not seems important till you have to delete several hosts, let say 20+ (eg. VMs on ESXi) and make no mistake in the process :)
Removal is second from bottom in terms of priority. So I don't see it high (right now) as my priority but I tried to approach the topic of connections mass managing from all possible angles (and removal is one of them).
To add to this, I think another useful function would be cloning. For instance, let's say one has two sites which share the architecture, and multiple hosts. Cloning and then categorizing the clones would immediately allow a user to mirror the configuration for a different site, and they'd just need to change the IP and name after. It would ease the bulk of configuration.
Edit: Adding to the Removal option debate, I can see a use-case in development environments where this would be very useful. At my company we can spin up either multiple VMs and containers (not necessarily nested) or provision bare-metal servers to test multiple configurations of a product.
Removing them in a single click could be very useful.
By clone you mean a deep clone operation in contrast to the existing clone operation in the context menu which only copies the top-level connection?
And about the notes, would it make more sense to create a setting to change the default notes template?
And yeah I will consider all of these options for v19 and will see which ones work out well
And about the notes, would it make more sense to create a setting to change the default notes template?
It could work but for me it would require upfront thinking and mass management is done mostly after the fact :)
By clone you mean a deep clone operation in contrast to the existing clone operation in the context menu which only copies the top-level connection?
And about the notes, would it make more sense to create a setting to change the default notes template?
And yeah I will consider all of these options for v19 and will see which ones work out well
I meant a normal Clone option where For each host selected via multi-select context, clone said host.
But a deep clone operation could also be considered as it would speed up configuration by, for instance, allowing the generation of multiples clones for a specifically selected Category, or using a specific Gateway. This, instead of having to go into each clone and individually configure many of the same things.