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Known Limitations

This document is the user-facing summary of what LinSync does not do in the current release (1.9.5). For the shipped feature record, see docs/feature-matrix.md. Items here fall into two categories:

  1. Currently unavailable features that may ship in a future release.
  2. Permanent non-goals that LinSync will not pursue.

This file is updated each release. As of 1.9.0 all roadmap phases (0–10) are shipped: the image, document, and webpage compare surfaces, the three-pane merge, the filter-grammar migrator, the plugin host with sandboxed helpers, sessions/projects, accessibility (screen-reader announcements, high-contrast change bars), localization, and lazy-render windowing are all complete and no longer listed here. linsync-cli archive now routes through the core plugin / virtual-folder pipeline (see "Archive compare" below).

Specialized compare — remaining gaps

The image, document, and webpage compare surfaces are implemented end-to-end. See docs/feature-matrix.md for a per-mode status table. The only remaining gaps are noted below.

Image compare

  • Image comparison is based on decoded RGBA8 samples. Animated GIF/APNG/WebP frame-by-frame compare (--image-frames first|all, bridge ?frames=) and Radiance HDR + OpenEXR decode (tone-mapped to RGBA8) ship, with the decoded color type reported on each result. Exact and tolerance modes include the alpha channel; perceptual mode compares RGB only. Full ICC color-management interpretation is out of scope — pixels are compared in their decoded color space without profile conversion. See docs/image-compare-design.md for the detailed contract.

Document compare

  • Text, OCR-text, and rendered (PDF/DOCX → per-page image diff) modes are all available. Text and OCR-text modes return the extracted left_text/right_text to the GUI side-by-side; rendered mode (via a pdf_renderer plugin) reports per-page pixel equality with a page-range field. OCR mode also returns per-word positional data (word_positions).
  • A visual word-box overlay drawn over a rendered source page is out of scope: OCR word positions are returned as structured data, but LinSync does not paint bounding boxes onto a rendered page image.
  • OCR language defaults to eng if the GUI does not pass one through; the bridge accepts an ocr_language query parameter. Per-plugin OCR options beyond language are left to the helper plugin.

Webpage compare

  • Rendered DOM diff and screenshot diff modes work end-to-end through crates/linsync-webengine, which rasterizes pages out-of-process via a short-lived headless qml6 WebEngineView. These sub-modes require the web-engine build feature and a Qt 6 QML runner on the host; when no runner is found render_url returns WebEngineError::NotImplemented so callers fall back to HTML-source compare.
  • Source HTML, extracted visible text, and resource-tree modes work end-to-end against the core webpage compare functions regardless of the web-engine feature.

GUI surface

  • The Stop button in the Compare toolbar (Main.qml) cancels an in-flight compare: each /compare carries a per-request id and the bridge /cancel?id=X endpoint flips its cancel flag, after which the response handler reports "Compare cancelled".
  • Text compare options sent by QML (case/whitespace/blank-line ignores, substitutions) are applied by the HTTP bridge via resolve_profile_for_request, which merges per-request query overrides (?ignore_case, ?ignore_whitespace, …) over the active profile. The CLI honours all options too.
  • Folder operations (copy, delete, rename, refresh) and the folder result view are served by /folder/query, which applies the user's active filters, sort, type filter, and path search server-side and pages the tree so it never loads in full.
  • The Merge page conflict navigation uses per-side numeric line ranges (currentConflictStart/End derive from each side's *_lines array), so conflict next/previous scrolls each pane to the correct line.

Archive compare

  • linsync-cli archive routes through the core plugin / virtual-folder pipeline: with --unpacker PLUGIN_ID (or when a matching unpacker plugin is discovered) it extracts via the sandboxed helper and runs a folder compare on the resulting virtual folder, including nested-archive recursion. For archive types the built-in extractor recognizes it still falls back to the direct unzip/tar path. The same archive→virtual- folder source is available from the GUI.

Packaging caveats

  • Ubuntu 24.04 (noble) does not ship qml6-module-org-kde-kirigami in its stock repos. The .deb artifact builds against Debian trixie (which does ship it). Ubuntu users need either a KDE neon source for the Kirigami package or to install via AppImage / Flatpak until the dependency lands in noble-updates.
  • Webpage rendered/screenshot compare requires the web-engine feature, which depends on the Qt WebEngine package and a Qt 6 QML runner on the host. The Arch, RPM, AppImage, and Flatpak recipes enable it; the Debian .deb does not (it builds the external QML host against Debian's stable Qt). Source/text/resource-tree webpage compare works without the feature.
  • Document compare requires Tesseract OCR, Poppler utilities, and LibreOffice on the host (used by helper plugins under packaging/plugins/). Installation is best-effort: distro repos satisfy this on Arch, Fedora, and Debian, but the helpers are not bundled inside the LinSync package.

Accessibility

  • The automated a11y CI gate (focus order grep, Accessible.name presence) passes, and the shipped a11y work includes screen-reader announcements (Accessible.announce), high-contrast diff change bars, verified keyboard focus order, a Swap-sides action, and broad Accessible.name/description coverage. A formal Orca screen reader walkthrough of every sidebar section is not yet logged as a release artifact.

Filters

  • The legacy attr: / dos: / ctime: / version: / shell: metadata prefixes are Windows-specific and remain unsupported on Linux. They return a structured FilterParseErrorKind with migration guidance via the GUI /filters/validate endpoint and the CLI linsync-cli filter validate subcommand.

Editing

  • Writable archive-member editing is deliberately deferred until a separate helper plus Flatpak-portal safety design exists. Archive contents are read-only in this release.
  • Freeform binary / hex editing is out of scope. The hex view is read-only.

Permanent non-goals

These will not change with future releases:

  • Windows / macOS builds. LinSync targets Linux only.
  • Windows-only in-process plugins, Windows Explorer shell extensions, and registry-backed settings are not supported. Linux uses external helper processes (docs/plugin-protocol.md), Dolphin service menus, and XDG JSON settings.
  • In-place editing of archive members and freeform binary / hex editing are deferred to later safety designs and may never ship.
  • Network / cloud provider integrations. LinSync compares filesystem content. Cloud providers must appear as mounted Linux paths (rclone, GVFS, etc.) before LinSync treats them as comparable.
  • The application shell is a native Qt / Kirigami desktop UI, not a web or browser-based shell.

Licensing boundary

  • LinSync is GPL-3.0-only.
  • Third-party application source, icons, translations, bundled filters, and plugin implementations must not be copied unless a later file-specific review proves GPL-3.0 compatibility (see docs/licensing.md).
  • deny.toml enforces the allow-list of license expressions for Cargo dependencies; just deny is the gate.