First Impressions of GitHub Codespaces • Hacker News Board

Re: First Impressions of GitHub Codespaces

#41

Post by albertzeyer » Tue, Sep 01, 2020, 8:58 AM UTC

dlkmp wrote: post #35

albertzeyer wrote: post #33

I also just got access to the beta. It works very seamlessly. You can install all the VSCode extensions you want. It came preinstalled with some Python 3.8 venv. The venv was put into the Git repo root directory, which is a bit strange, as I first needed to modify my gitignore to ignore that. Git push directly from the VSCode menu directly worked and pushed the change back to GitHub, without further setup. I did not…

From the blog post I understand that my vscode configuration is somehow stored within my browser, not connected to my github account. Is it also stored per project or globally? Because either choice brings its own problems. I want the vim plugin to behave the same on all instances but language-specific plugins or similar only make sense in the context of a specific project. How does this work currently?

It stores settings just as usual in .vscode/settings.json in your project. (I usually have .vscode in my .gitignore, but maybe it make sense to include it in the repo.)

Additionally, there is some "Settings-Sync" feature, which I have not really explored yet. Maybe this is global for all instances.

Btw, the startup time of the codespace VM is a bit annoying. It takes approx 30-60 seconds when it was inactive. And it get automatically suspended after 30 minutes of inactivity.

Re: First Impressions of GitHub Codespaces

#42

Post by alienspaces » Tue, Sep 01, 2020, 9:07 AM UTC

"Most of my daily tools are Windows based, so I’ve been spending a lot of time getting Windows Subsystem for Linux working alongside the rest of my daily workflow, which comes with its own headaches."

My work place is considering switching providing developers with a MacBook Pro to a Dell Windows machine. At one point we were all allowed Linux which was awesome.. Is WSL still painful to use? My prior experience came to a dead end when I had irreconcilable Docker issues, the fine details I don't quite remember now other than it had something to do with accessing the host network. All good now or still meh?

Re: First Impressions of GitHub Codespaces

#43

Post by golergka » Tue, Sep 01, 2020, 9:09 AM UTC

desmap wrote: post #3

> as a co-founder who is spending less time as a developer, and more time in meetings, writing emails, strategy papers, [...] this is just amazing [...] I’ve been spending a lot of time getting Windows Subsystem for Linux working lol, just ssh into a $3 vps as dev machine, real Ubuntu, real tmux/(n)vim, no setup, no hassle Edit: to be fair, Cloud9 was my entry drug into remote development bringing me to my setup abov…

Haven't we been through this discussion before, with "lol just use rsync" comment on the Dropbox original show HN post?...

Re: First Impressions of GitHub Codespaces

#44

Post by IfOnlyYouKnew » Tue, Sep 01, 2020, 9:09 AM UTC

jacquesm wrote: post #16

That is a very badly chosen name. Codespaces was a company that went under because they were (or claimed to have been) hacked. https://threatpost.com/hacker-puts-hosting-service-code-spac... If you want to instill confidence this name is not the best start you could have picked.

Nobody (but you) remembers a minor company that went under six years ago. And those that do are unlikely to believe there’s a connection.

Re: First Impressions of GitHub Codespaces

#45

Post by _54qb » Tue, Sep 01, 2020, 9:13 AM UTC

While impressive technology, I still get that eerie feeling of my computer's ownership being slowly taken away from me. The problem is not Github codespaces offering us an alternative to traditional dev environments, the problem may be 10 years from now, when someone says: "All the coding is done on the web nowadays, why should we allow users to install compilers and dev tools on their machine? They may use those for hacking and compromising the security of our systems. They may hurt themselves in the process and sue us! Better not take risks". I'm afraid to go into a future where this is normal...

Re: First Impressions of GitHub Codespaces

#46

Post by rplnt » Tue, Sep 01, 2020, 9:19 AM UTC

_54qb wrote: post #45

While impressive technology, I still get that eerie feeling of my computer's ownership being slowly taken away from me. The problem is not Github codespaces offering us an alternative to traditional dev environments, the problem may be 10 years from now, when someone says: "All the coding is done on the web nowadays, why should we allow users to install compilers and dev tools on their machine? They may use those for…

10? I'm fairly certain some companies were asking for these features precisely for this reason. To have better control.

Re: First Impressions of GitHub Codespaces

#47

Post by AbuAssar » Tue, Sep 01, 2020, 9:35 AM UTC

soco wrote: post #38

I'm surprised nobody mentioned GitPod[1] - it's in business since quite a while in my GitHub projects, powered by VSCode, with terminal, pretty much everything Codespaces does... Any thoughts on such a comparison? Is GitHub reinventing the wheel locally? [1] https://www.gitpod.io/

Gitpod is powered by eclipse theia

Re: First Impressions of GitHub Codespaces

#48

Post by bryanrasmussen » Tue, Sep 01, 2020, 9:40 AM UTC

_54qb wrote: post #45

While impressive technology, I still get that eerie feeling of my computer's ownership being slowly taken away from me. The problem is not Github codespaces offering us an alternative to traditional dev environments, the problem may be 10 years from now, when someone says: "All the coding is done on the web nowadays, why should we allow users to install compilers and dev tools on their machine? They may use those for…

>They may hurt themselves in the process and sue us!

has a hacker ever hurt themselves by hacking and sued the company whose computer they were using?

Anyway I guess people can also buy their own computers if they want to play outside the sandbox.

Re: First Impressions of GitHub Codespaces

#49

Post by fotcorn » Tue, Sep 01, 2020, 9:42 AM UTC

There is also coder.com which provides more or less the same thing (running Visual Studio Code in the browser).

The code is actually open source and you can run it on your own machine: https://github.com/cdr/code-server

Hint: Set the following environment variables before starting code-server to get access to the official Visual Studio Code extension marketplace. This is against the TOS of VSCode, but some extensions are missing/broken on the alternative marketplaces.

SERVICE_URL=https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/_apis/public/gallery

ITEM_URL=https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items

Re: First Impressions of GitHub Codespaces

#50

Post by bachmeier » Tue, Sep 01, 2020, 9:46 AM UTC

golergka wrote: post #43

desmap wrote: post #3

> as a co-founder who is spending less time as a developer, and more time in meetings, writing emails, strategy papers, [...] this is just amazing [...] I’ve been spending a lot of time getting Windows Subsystem for Linux working lol, just ssh into a $3 vps as dev machine, real Ubuntu, real tmux/(n)vim, no setup, no hassle Edit: to be fair, Cloud9 was my entry drug into remote development bringing me to my setup abov…

Haven't we been through this discussion before, with "lol just use rsync" comment on the Dropbox original show HN post?...

"Use SSH rather than WSL" is not the same as the Dropbox comment. Dropbox was dead simple to use, and it did something complicated, keeping files on various machines synced. WSL requires setup and there's friction while you use it. SSH is actually less setup than WSL if you're using a standard Ubuntu Digital Ocean instance.