DevOps, github

I generally use a Raspberry Pi as my home Visual Studio Code server, allowing me to code in a dedicated developer environment. Sometimes though I might be away from home on a device that can’t connect back. So what’s a geek that wants to code to do in those circumstances?

GitHub Codespaces

GitHub Codespaces provide a development environment that can be used on any device that has an internet connection and a web browser. If you prefer Visual Studio Code then it can be used instead of the browser.

Firing up a code space is as simple as opening your code repository, clicking “Code” in the top right, clicking “Create Codespace…” on the branch you’re working on, and then launching it.

  • Creating a Codespace on main
  • A screen grab showing an expanded Codespaces menu on the main branch of a repository. The code has been created and the menu shows a codespace running, called organic parakeet.
    Organic Parakeet is the Codespace
  • An expanded Codespaces menu shows a running codespace called "Organic Parakeet" and an expanded submenu with options for rename, export, change machine type, stop codespace, open in browser, open in visual studio code, and delete.
    Multiple options to use the Codespace, such as in the browser and in Visual Studio Code.

The Codespace runs in a dev container with the repository code and a variety of processors/storage are available. Best of all, GitHub gives those on free personal accounts 15 GB storage per month and 120 processor core hours per month for free. The dev containers can be adjusted as required, so those 120 processor core hours could be 60hrs of a 2 processor core dev container or 15hrs of a 8 processor core dev container.