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Closed Investigate technical directions for Remote Development MVC
  • Investigate technical directions for Remote Development MVC

  • Investigate technical directions for Remote Development MVC

    Closed Epic created by Eric Schurter

    Goal

    Explore technical directions for a GitLab Remote Development offering. The Web IDE makes it convenient for anyone to make edits to code in a repository on GitLab. With the transition to a VS Code-based Web IDE, we'll be able to deliver an even more feature-packed editing experience. It will, however still lack the real-time runtime environment necessary to do "real" work.

    The Remote Development category is about bridging that gap for developers. Having a centralized, standardized, and secure development environment separate from your local machine has many benefits to the individual developer. Organizations also benefit from standardizing processes and accelerating onboarding.

    But to get there we need to connect the Web IDE to some kind of runtime. There are several directions we could take to realize this feature. This epic encapsulates the technical directions we would like to explore.

    Requirements for MVC

    • Connect the GitLab Web IDE to a remote environment
    • Get realtime feedback from the remote development environment while editing in the Web IDE
    • Manage a connection (connect, disconnect, show status of the connection) from the Web IDE
    • Documentation of technical requirements and limitations

    Longer-term requirements

    • Wider adoption will not happen until we can SSH (or otherwise securely connect) to the remote environment from a local, desktop IDE. For now, we would limit that to desktop versions of VS Code and vim, but ideally we'd want to see other popular IDEs support connecting as well. (For example, JetBrains IDEs or Xcode)
    • Metered usage and tiered pricing based on CPU/RAM configurations for a GitLab-hosted remote development architecture
    • Configure and manage containers, resources, and usage limits from within the GitLab UI

    What does success look like?

    The goal of this epic is not to have a working MVC in the product, ready for customers to use. A proof of concept may be enough to determine the viability of a technical direction. Documentation of the technical architecture, analysis of the alternate approaches and why they are less than ideal, and an iteration plan for an MVC will complete this epic. A presentation will be created and presented in a recorded video to summarize our findings and next steps.

    Edited by Eric Schurter

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