Nice Updates to GitHub Codespaces
When last I looked at GitHub Codespaces, it had a few issues that meant I couldn't really do all the development I needed because it couldn't yet forward ports on the web-based UI. I found a way to run Postgres on a Codespace, so I'd have a built-in database, and it was persistent across restarts - which was marvelous. And I could customize the UI to be pretty much exactly what I needed to get work done.
But it was that nagging port forwarding that really meant I couldn't get real work done - not like I could on my laptop. And then I decided to give it another look... and they have not been sitting idly by. 🙂
The latest update to Codespaces has a much improved UI in the browser. It seems nearly native on my iPad Pro, and handles both the touch and trackpad gestures. Very nicely done. It also has a slight difference on the mounting of the work, so I had to update the cleanup() script in my .bashrc file:
# # This is a simple function to cleanup the GitHub Codespace once it's been # created. Basically, I need to remove the left-overs of the dotfiles setup # and clean up the permissions on all the files. # function cleanup () { pushd $HOME echo "cleaning up the dotfiles..." rm -rf dotfiles install README.md echo "resetting the ownership of the /workspaces..." sudo chown -R drbob:drbob /workspaces echo "cleaning up the permissions on the /workspaces..." sudo chmod -R g-w /workspaces sudo chmod -R o-w /workspaces sudo setfacl -R -bn /workspaces echo "done" popd }
and with this, all my new Codespaces will have the right permissions, and the terminal will look and act like it should. Not too bad a change. But the real news is in the forwarded ports.
It appears that what GitHub has done is to open the port(s) on the running Docker image so that you can easily open a browser to the jetty port 8080 service that's running. It's really just as good as the port forwarding, and it completes the last needed capability to use Codespaces for real development.
If there was one more thing I'd wish for - it's that this would be included in the GitHub iPad app - so that the files are held locally, and edited locally, and the connection to the Docker instance is remote, but you can work locally.
Maybe soon. 🙂