Che Theia (multi-root) fails to detect projects when they are cloned by another tool

[amisevsk]

Describe the bug

When projects are cloned by an external tool, Che Theia (with multi-root enabled) will show

No projects are in the workspace yet

even though the proejcts are present in their expected folders.

The che.theia-workspace file in /projects is also unpopulated:

$ cat che.theia-workspace
{"folders":[]}

Manually filling in the file with

{
   "folders": [
      {
         "path": "web-nodejs-sample"
      },
   ]
}

causes workspace folders to appear as expected.

Che version

• latest

Steps to reproduce

If DevWorkspaces support is enabled, can be reproduced via the following DevWorkspace:

cat <<EOF | kubectl apply -f -
kind: DevWorkspace
apiVersion: workspace.devfile.io/v1alpha2
metadata:
  name: theia
spec:
  started: true
  template:
    projects:
      - name: web-nodejs-sample
        git:
          remotes:
            origin: "https://github.com/che-samples/web-nodejs-sample.git"
    components:
      - name: theia
        plugin:
          uri: https://che-plugin-registry-main.surge.sh/v3/plugins/eclipse/che-theia/next/devfile.yaml
      - name: project-clone          
        container:
          cpuLimit: 50m
          cpuRequest: 5m
          image: quay.io/amisevsk/project-clone:dev
          memoryLimit: 200Mi
          memoryRequest: 64Mi
          mountSources: true
    commands:
      - id: clone-projects
        apply:
          component: project-clone
    events:
      prestart:
        - clone-projects
EOF

Expected behavior

Che-Theia should detect that projects are already there and set up the multi-root workspace appropriately

[RomanNikitenko]

should be fixed by #19101

[vitaliy-guliy]

Link with #19544
Will be fixed by this PR eclipse-che/che-theia#1076

[RomanNikitenko]

@amisevsk
I didn't test it recently, but I guess the issue should be fixed by eclipse-che/che-theia#1074 - it's already merged.

The main idea of the eclipse-che/che-theia#1074 is: at starting che-theia we check - if there are already projects on file system. If so - we add them as workspace folders.

So:

• if projects already exist on the step when che-theia is starting - they are added as workspace folders - it's fixed by Add backward compatibility related to switching to multi root mode che-theia#1074
• the problem when user clones a project manually (using a terminal or a command) should be fixed by Auto detect projects in multiroot workspace che-theia#1076

[amisevsk]

Thanks @RomanNikitenko