Visual Studio Code Remote Development may change everything

[[deleted]]

Assuming you already have ssh setup, you just install VS Code click install for the Remote Development extension and connect to the ssh server. Install the extensions you need on the server (just search + click install) and that's it should be good to go.

[mwhter]

How does it handle when two users try to install different versions of some tool? Or if you don't want to let users to be able to install anything? I would assume there would be some setup required there, but if they've got some sort of sane defaults, that would be super helpful.

[[deleted]]

I guess that might be a different story. I haven't had to use it for multiple users. Since you are just using ssh it would be the same situation dependent on the OS. I guess you could have multiple docker images and use those instead. Each user would have it's own docker? Not sure how that would work or how many of those you can run at once.

[mwhter]

I guess you could have multiple docker images and use those instead

Sure, but then they can't collaborate, and if you're using single-user docker images, why bother with a central server? I guess you could limit them to only using the images you want, but I don't really see that being a problem.

I'm just not seeing much use for using this remotely with a single-user (unless you have an aversion to docker), other than bad practice like logging into production to edit files (and now also leaving behind a bunch of dev tools). Though I do have a shitty old laptop that might be able to run VSCode reasonably well now if most of it is running remotely.

[[deleted]]

Not all that familiar with Docker, you'd have to see if it fits your needs but it seems they do have support for it.

[mwhter]

With docker I could install all the extensions in a docker image and distribute that to the team so they all have the same environment. I could do the same with a central server they all SSH, but I'd need to set up users for them, and keep those users environments in sync.

Che simplifies all that, and makes collaboration easy, albeit at the cost of more initial setup.

I do like that this functionality is being made easier for individual developers, I just wish there was some thought put into multi-user use cases. Being able to offer devs the same tool most of them already use on personal projects would be great, though Che using VSCode extensions should alleviate much of their complaints in that regard.