Started using code-server on a remote server. Pretty good. Going to switch working like that.
Its a bit like remote vscode only that the vscode ui is also remote and served via a web browser. Coming from intellij I was surprised that the user experience in terms of responsiveness is actually better with the remote setup. IntelliJ these days just lagging on everything.
Developing inside a virtual machine
61–70 of 147 posts
Re: Developing inside a virtual machine
#62Thr Dev Container ecosystem for VsCode really is quite impressive at the moment. All your dev dependencies, wrapped up in a docker image per repo.
Heh if you can work around ALL its weird quirks, especially on windows.
Re: Developing inside a virtual machine
#63> I’ve found developers frowning up Ubuntu and preaching for folks to use NixOS, Arch, Debian or other distros.
My setup is mostly one VM per project group / online identity. Most of them using Ubuntu. The problem is when I want to work on an old project to check how it likes new technology I tend to stumble into the "you should have kept the OS up to date" problem. Ubuntu does not make it easy to upgrade if you miss more than a year of update.
And even if you keep up to date, they tend to break things often (loved the X11 to weyland switch when working with screen capture libraries) so new VMs are using debian.
Re: Developing inside a virtual machine
#64Are you installing the project dependencies on the VM directly or in a docker container? I'm curious how well docker on top of the Ubuntu vm works. Orbstack is great for personal use, but some companies don't want to pay for it, and this might be an alternative to have a better docker experience on macOS.
> I'm curious how well docker on top of the Ubuntu vm works.
Works well enough. Better than Docker on barebone MacOS if you have lot of file access in a volume.
That's one of the thing which surprised me when I started using VMs to develop. First time was with a postgres backed app: I expected to lose performance when moving everything in a VM. But got the exact opposite result at the time. Postgres really liked the linux filesystem more than the windows one, enough to do more than offset the VM tax.
Re: Developing inside a virtual machine
#65I do a switcharoo, I develop for iOS inside a macOS VM with Linux host.
After a 5 years hiatus I started developing mobile apps again and I was frustrated to learn that Apple doesn't allow renewing the developer license on web anymore, I don't own a Mac and even Apple developer app on iPhone didn't allow me to renew my license.
After I signed into a macOS VM, I was able to renew my license through Apple Developer App on iPhone as macOS version of the app requires T2 chip.
Now I have PTSD flashbacks of why I left mobile development in first place.
Re: Developing inside a virtual machine
#66Windows 11 and WSL manages this well . For those developing linux apps & containers using VS Code, you'll find the Windows 11 experience to be very good. You can code against WSL which offers the more popular distros, or use HyperV to run your own custom VMs.
In general, yes. One weird quirk: networking can be peculiar. Windows creates a magic bridging between the host and WSL, and as anything magic, it can break for specific use cases. VPN is one [0]: my WSL instances lose outgoing networking when connecting to our company VPN. There are workarounds but none are trivial. [0] https://superuser.com/questions/1715764/wsl2-has-no-connecti...
This has been fixed for many months now as you can switch between different networking types for WSL.
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/networking#mir...
Re: Developing inside a virtual machine
#67Earlier quoted context omitted.
I worked at a government agency that used Zscaler to perform TLS MITM inspection. You have to create a tunnel to a Zcaler datacenter and send all your traffic to them encrypted with a certificate they provide so they can decrypt it. Then they encrypt it again and send it on its way. It can detect things that otherwise could not but you are putting a LOT of trust into Zscaler security because anyone who hacks them can…
You'd think last year's Clownstrike incident would put the lie to the efficacy of the fucking-for-virginity approach to endpoint security favored by organizations but no. At the enterprise level, security isn't really about security, it's about having an audit trail so bad actors can be caught after the fact.
You would be surprised how much of corporate cybersecurity is done like this. It has not in anyway improved sine crowdstrike, on the contrary EDR shenanigans has probably grow 100% since last year.
These security companies must have really good salesmen. Or maybe IT departments are always ran by clueless fools, who knows?
Re: Developing inside a virtual machine
#68Pretty sure you'd have a more lightweight experience with https://www.jetify.com/devbox.
Happy to set it up and demo if you can share (or DM) a repo URL.
Re: Developing inside a virtual machine
#69I do a switcharoo, I develop for iOS inside a macOS VM with Linux host. After a 5 years hiatus I started developing mobile apps again and I was frustrated to learn that Apple doesn't allow renewing the developer license on web anymore, I don't own a Mac and even Apple developer app on iPhone didn't allow me to renew my license. After I signed into a macOS VM, I was able to renew my license through Apple Developer App…
Can you share more info on your MacOS VM setup? I’ve managed to set one up precisely once with proxmox, and getting iCloud/imessage to work required me to contact Apple support
Re: Developing inside a virtual machine
#70Pretty sure you'd have a more lightweight experience with https://www.jetify.com/devbox . Happy to set it up and demo if you can share (or DM) a repo URL.
That sets up a VM with Docker as well.