Provide an option to share the state of new repo viewer via URL

Description

Slack discussion

--- Balasankar "Balu" C in #frontend ---

When we ship new repo viewer (the one with multiple tabs), one enhancement I would love to have is the ability to specify which all files to open via URL. So I can share a URL and expect the person opening it to see the same files I am seeing.

#wishlist

PS: I will open a feature request, anyway.

--- Kushal Pandya [9 hours ago] ---

Since URL length itself has a limit, one way I can think of is to associate unique ID to each file (something that isn't very practical for repos as large as Kernel for instance), another problem is that when repo page is loaded with new editor, we don't have entire tree information right away (we get child nodes every time parent is expanded), so even if we managed to have File IDs, we'd have to make sure tree is expanded correctly for the files we want to open on page load, which would be performance heavy. One MVP way of doing it would be to hide tree for such perma-links and make use of local storage so at least someone can use it locally (like actual editors do to preserve state when you close it) instead of sharing it with someone. (edited)

--- Winnie Hellmann [7 hours ago] ---

we could have shared “editor sessions” (like tmux / screen)

--- Winnie Hellmann [7 hours ago] ---

…and make user with master permission lock them (no files can be added / removed from session)

--- Tim Zallmann [6 hours ago] ---

yeah great idea, i think sessions would be the most practicable also for self editing, or having sessions based on branch etc. for sharing this could work like codepen

Feature checklist

Make sure these are completed before closing the issue, with a link to the relevant commit.

Edited by Eric Eastwood