URL for workspaces

Problem statement

How are we exposing the WebIDE connected to a remote server on the browser?

Context

The following is our current understanding of how things will work or how they are working in the spike

Currently, the WebIDE for a project(say gitlab-org/gitlab) is exposed on the URL https://gitlab.com/-/ide/project/gitlab-org/gilab. The workspace that will be created will have an editor injected in it(let's say the editor is exposed on port 3000) whose URL would be something like <port>-<workspace_name>.<ga4k_agent_id_or_name>.<common_suffix>. <common_suffix> can be gitlab.io or gitlab.com or anything else. We will be generating a TLS certificate of *.<ga4k_agent_id_or_name>.<common_suffix> for each GA4K agentk and the certificate will be available on the kubernetes cluster for decrypting traffic.

Possible solution

Solution 1

• The remote workspace exposes the endpoints as <port>-<workspace_name>.<ga4k_agent_id_or_name>.<common_suffix>
• Use the WebIDE URL for the workspace i.e. https://gitlab.com/-/ide/project/gitlab-org/gilab/-/workspace/<workspace_name>/ -> this will automatically connect to port 3000 in the given workspace where the editor is exposed. The browser will still show the URL https://gitlab.com/-/ide/project/gitlab-org/gilab/-/workspace/<workspace_name>/

Solution 2 - Refer this comment to understand why this is not feasible

• The remote workspace exposes the endpoints as <port>-<workspace_name>.<ga4k_agent_id_or_name>.<common_suffix>
• The browser URL for viewing an application on any port in the workspace, would be https://gitlab.com/-/ide/project/gitlab-org/gilab/-/workspace/<workspace_name>/<port>/ which will correspond to <port>-<workspace_name>.<ga4k_agent_id_or_name>.<common_suffix>.
• The browser URL for viewing the editor(exposed on port 3000) in the workspace, would be https://gitlab.com/-/ide/project/gitlab-org/gilab/-/workspace/<workspace_name>/3000/.

Solution 3

• The remote workspace exposes the endpoints as <port>-<workspace_name>.<ga4k_agent_id_or_name>.<common_suffix>
• The browser URL for viewing the editor(exposed on port 3000) in the workspace, would be 3000-<workspace_name>.<ga4k_agent_id_or_name>.<common_suffix>.

Solution 4

... ?

Things to consider

• How each solution can be restrictive/problematic for the user developing in the workspace?
• User experience
• Technical challenges

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Historically, we thought about URL for workspace in #371968 (closed)