Mosh for Chrome v0.4.5

This release includes a number of visible and behind-the-scenes changes and bugfixes. Among the visible changes are:

• Optional support for Google Public DNS-over-HTTPS.
• Improved terminal preferences editor.
• Configurable Mosh escape key (h/t @telotortium).
• "Native" Windows port.

Some of the behind-the-scenes changes include:

• Update to the latest upstream Mosh v1.2.6 and hterm v1.57.
• New build system based on Bazel.
• Update to Pepper SDK version 49.

Some of these deserve more discussion.

Google Public DNS-over-HTTPS

You can choose to use https://dns.google.com to resolve your hostnames. This provides "last mile" privacy and authentication between you and the DNS resolver. This also makes Mosh for Chrome able to use DNSSEC, when available, to ensure your hostnames are authentic. This further enables you to put SSH host key fingerprints in DNS, which helps reduce the likelihood of a Man-in-the-Middle attack. See this wiki page for more details.

"Native" Windows port

Windows users do not have a native Mosh client, so many Mosh for Chrome users are on Windows. However, Google Chrome is dropping support for Chrome Apps on all platforms except Chrome OS in the coming months. Therefore, starting with this release, Mosh for Chrome can be downloaded as a single-file installer and installed easily on Windows. Under the hood, this uses the NW.js framework, which is just a fancy way to deliver an app that runs in Chromium (open source version of Chrome), providing a "native experience".

The Windows port is beta, and as such there are some known issues:

• Issue #130: Links that open new browser windows (such as "Help") are blank.
• Issue #137: You can't have more than one session at a time.

Update to Mosh v1.2.6

The latest upstream Mosh release is included here, which yields some performance benefits for Mosh for Chrome. It is backward compatible with older mosh-server binaries, but also upgrading to the latest on your server will yield the most performance benefit. See their announcement for details.

New build system based on Bazel

This is behind-the-scenes, but is a big structural change to the project. Bazel replaces the old hacky build script and Makefile that (barely) held everything together. Development is now a lot quicker, easier, and more reliable. The structure and extensibility of Bazel made it feasible to add things like unit tests and the Windows port. Read more about how Bazel is being used here.