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GitHub Codespaces

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Re: GitHub Codespaces

#171

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure if this is really true. Why would you want to become a contributor to an OSS project if you can't bother to get it working on your machine? You actually learn quite a bit about the project by going through its dependency hell.

Idk, I feel like we've been trained to believe this is necessary. Why you should need to know more about a dependency than its documented API? This sort of reminds me of Americans believing their current healthcare situation is the only way to do it even though it's awful.

Don't get me wrong - I don't think that you should go through it every time. Also, I'm not sure anyone reads the documented API of a dependency until some unexpected behaviour is happening. My basic point is that the dependency hell is not the biggest barrier for an open source contribution. In fact, mixing both problems is a bit strange to me - codespaces is not going to magically solve the dependency hell - it's just going to shift it to some other part of the configuration. The best way to start contributing to an OSS project is really be to have a mentor in project who could guide you through it during your first contribution. Personally, I'm willing to fight the machine for a couple of hours/days to get something to compile -- however, it's hard to justify reading code for weeks in the hope I can tackle an open issue.

Re: GitHub Codespaces

#172
post #89

This is pretty epic. VS Code has proven itself to be one of the best (if not the best) and feature-complete editor out there. It's basically an IDE of a ton of languages at this point, and it's completely free. Integrating it with GH is a no-brainer move from Microsoft's standpoint, to increase market share even further with more seamless integration. If they're able to do setup for Python, Go, Ruby, and JavaScript p…

> if not the best Them's fightin' words. But on a more serious note, I think 50% is a massive overestimation. We haven't seen pricing. Unless MS is willing to take a huge loss on this there's no way it will be free. We all know the resources required to run a modern web app in development mode. I can certainly see this being useful if you happen to be away from your dev machine, or if you just want to contribute to s…

There is preview pricing available for VS Code Spaces, which is almost the same thing. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/pricing/details/visual-stu...

The estimated cost for a full time developer to use the system is $23.30/month or roughly $280 a year. That's quite competitive- my "portable" workstation costs north of $2k and has a 3 year life span, so the "yearly" cost is $666. The benefits of being able to get use cheaper dev terminals in the general case could pay for itself, even before you get to the benefits of having a common environment.

Also, you can self host for free. 50% is an over estimate (I've never seen 50% of developers agree to ANYTHING), but broad adoption looks highly likely.

Re: GitHub Codespaces

#173
This is going to be amazingly useful.

It's also some pretty serious vertical integration for Github/Microsoft!

IDE: Github Source control + collaboration: Github CI/CD: Github Hosting: Github + Azure (with docker and azure functions that experience is pretty much already there technically?)

Re: GitHub Codespaces

#174
post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yup all the free stuff is ultimately to lead us into using and paying for Azure. Need an open source alternative to GitHub.

Sourcehut would like to have a word... https://sr.ht/

I had not seen that...interesting.

Re: GitHub Codespaces

#176
post #58

What languages does this support? It would be super cool if this supports `xcodebuild` :O

We support all languages that can run within a Linux container, see https://github.com/mcolyer/codespace-containers/blob/master/... for a base example image (I work as the product lead on this).

Well then I'm glad you're here...Is it possible to integrate with an existing Dockerfile? My team's main build is handled by an image that is a result of years of fine-tuning and files with external dependency definitions (like requirements.txt for pip). Getting all of that installed in github's container is only slightly easier than getting it all installed in a desktop IDE, which is currently prohibitively difficult for us. We don't want to end up with a second platform we have to maintain.

More generally, is there going to be a clean way to to use this if we already have a containerized stack, especially editing code in a user's existing container? (With the code still under version control, of course)

Re: GitHub Codespaces

#177

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's plausible, given that VS Code is effectively a web app. (the exception in features could be Extensions) Not the first IDE to have full-feature parity on desktop and web.

Not having extensions alone already means it's not the full experience. How many people run vanilla VS Code? Can I run unit tests? Debug?

The article notes near the top that extensions are supported, and also answers your other questions.

Re: GitHub Codespaces

#178

This will probably affect sales of beefier Macs too. Why do you need a beefy machine when all compilation / intelligence is streamed from the cloud?

That doesn't solve the problem of having to deal with Windows 10 or a laptop running Linux.

Re: GitHub Codespaces

#179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While VS Code is definitely good in general, and first choice for languages like JavaScript, I find it really hard to compare it to JetBrains PyCharm and GoLand (understanding GoLand has no free version). The debugging and refactoring experiences for Go and Python in VSCode feel slow, awkward to set up and configure and just generally tacked-on. I have gotten the PyCharm professional and GoLand licensed through my em…

I've found I love JetBrains IDEs when I'm operating as a one-language power-user. But the last few years I find myself needing to use 2-3 languages in the same day (several more if you include markup "languages"). VSCode has become my editor of choice for local dev and vim for remote dev/debug.

I use IntelliJ with the various language plugins for this reason. It allows me to use the same setup for all my languages. Granted, I do get the full license through my employer, but I think it's worth it even if my company didn't pay for it.

Re: GitHub Codespaces

#180
post #155

Microsoft is really the best at the slow strategic burn. * You host your project in github * You fund your project using github sponsors * You develop your project using github codespaces * You compile, test and deploy using github actions * You cloud host on azure Each individual feature is definitely great. I'm not trying to be critical of Microsoft trying to turn their investment in github into a profitable busine…

Yup all the free stuff is ultimately to lead us into using and paying for Azure. Need an open source alternative to GitHub.

Why is that a bad thing? If you found value in Azure and it solved your problem, why is that a negative?
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