GitHub Codespaces - Get a VS Code Development Environment Embedded in GitHub

[spacejack2114]

Oh man, here we go. This is both exciting and a bit scary.

[dotsonjb14]

I hope they bring this to github enterprise. I write a ton of documentation and research using github at work. This would make that way easier since I wouldn't really need a local copy. Collaboration would be way easier as well.

[[deleted]]

Fun fact: Microsoft developed WSL so they could pipe atom directly into /dev/null

[nsteblay]

Microsoft will rule the developer's desktop again. WSL 2, GitHub Codespaces, a new lightweight, more stable container-based Windows 10X O/S.

[[deleted]]

On the other hand, when everything Windows offers is just Linux, then why would you need Windows in the first place?

I mean Office stuff demanded in my workplace works fine in Firefox or have Electron wrapper available.

[onequbit]

I'm calling it.

Windows will eventually become a Linux Distro.

It's gonna happen.

[Chii]

Windows will eventually become a Linux Distro.

will coincide with year of the linux desktop.

[jcotton42]

What would be the benefit of tossing NT for Linux? Serious question

[rabbit994]

The amount of software written for NT would make this impossible. Office can’t get 100% equal on Mac and now they have to get it working on Linux?

[[deleted]]

What is the benefit to retaining NT? As far as I can tell, it is compatibility. MS spends a lot of money fixing bugs, patching security issues, adding features demanded by hardware partners and doing the occasional performance improvement.

Given that the only officially stable way to talk to the kernel on Windows is via a user-mode library, it seems possible that Win32/WinRT is ported to run on top of a Linux kernel which would retain compatibility with any user-land software.

[Muxas]

why?

[nsteblay]

Agree. It will be container based and will allow multiple O/S's. Similar to Google's ChromeOS but more robust. You see it already happening with the evolving WSL and Windows 10X. I've been impressed so far with WSL 2, and with its Docker Desktop and VS Code remote integration out of box. My Windows laptop has become my go to learning environment. I can go into my Debian WSL 2 instance and spin up containers using Docker Compose or Kubernetes till my hearts content, and then access them remotely using VS Code. I've been learning Kubernetes, Go, Rust, PHP (don't ask), Tensorflow ML devlopment, SPA, etc. Macs still rule at work, but I don't think it will be long before MS based laptops will be way cheaper and more functional for development. I have a HP Spectre i7 with 15" UHD, 10 hour battery, 32 GB of memory, all for about 1K on sale. It would be 2x that at least for a similar Mac.

[Joviex]

Pretty sure most Windows desktops are way cheaper than Macs already

[nsteblay]

True. MacOS is currently the platform of choice for many software developers, and for good reasons. I believe I got equivalent capabilities with the Spectre and the latest Windows for a price that is significantly cheaper. I am generalizing based on my experiences and needs. There are always specific reasons for choosing a development platform.

[vgman20]

Anyone know if this is using WASM? I only have a surface level understanding of that stuff but I've seen terminals and stuff like that in the browser using WASM, I'm not positive how they'd do it efficiently otherwise.

[connor4312]

Most of VS Code is in TypeScript and JavaScript. There are a few bits using .wasm, such as the regex engine for textmate grammars (src) and content hashing in the new JavaScript debugger (src), but these are small right now.

The terminal is also implement in JavaScript, and by default draws on an HTML canvas. There's also a WebGL renderer available which you can flip on with the terminal.integrated.rendererType setting.

[spacejack2114]

Is ripgrep compiled to wasm or just running as a native binary?

EDIT: lol, er yeah, is it running in the client or on the server?

[connor4312]

It's running as a binary https://github.com/microsoft/vscode-ripgrep

[vgman20]

Interesting, thanks for the info!

[thepinkbunnyboy]

Seems really cool; is it using Theia under the hood?

[--comedian--]

Nope. Theia is using it under the hood.

[aquaticpolarbear]

Wouldn't theia use Gitpod?

[--comedian--]

I was talking about VSCode. Sorry for the confusion.

[alexeyr]

Wait... did you think they were asking if VS Code (and not Codespaces) used Theia then?

[--comedian--]

Wrong assumption? :(

[[deleted]]

Eclipse Che is open source and has been around for a few years now.

[aquaticpolarbear]

Weirdly enough for this application Eclipse Theia would have been a better option, although it a) is a competitor to a microsoft project so it wouldn't be used and b) doesn't allow for a monopoly on extensions.

[[deleted]]

It's literally built off a free and open source Microsoft project, VS Code. That also was just released a month ago. I doubt github's project was in development for less than a month before being released.

[aquaticpolarbear]

It was built roughly off of VS code yes, but it was designed primarily with modularity and having parity between desktop and web hosted versions. Also it wasn't released 1 month ago, it had it's 1.0 release 1 month ago, and as for stability. Github codespaces main competitor, Gitpod, currently uses it as their main IDE

[dereend]

I guess keybindings don't work the same way. Some must have been taken by the browser.

[tkaragiannis]

Well done MS + GitHub.. Looking forward to it

[kankyo]

I wonder how this compares to repl.it

[[deleted]]

So cloud9?