codespaces

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One Click Into GitHub Codespaces

Codespaces has a number of new features to get you coding fast, from anywhere on the web, with a single click. Let's jump right in!

You can now add recommended secrets to a project when creating a Codespace!
Screenshot 2023-04-21 at 9 08 25 AM

Recommending secrets will ensure developers won't miss any API keys when creating a Codespace from your repo. You can specify any secrets you need to run your project in a Dev Container. If a developer already has a secret stored in their user secrets, Codespaces recommends they add the secret to their repository. Developers can worry less about setup and jump right into development!

Creating A Share Link & Resuming A Codespace

Do you want to share your project for others to try out? You can generate a share link to share in a tweet, add to your website, or send to a friend.
Screenshot 2023-04-21 at 9 09 24 AM

Want developers to pick up on the last Codespace they had when they clicked your share link? You can set your share links to drop developers into the same Codespace every time by selecting "Quick start."

You can select a specific Dev Container for the share link to create a codespace from! Codespaces detects the repo and branch from your repository, limiting your setup.
Screenshot 2023-04-24 at 10 45 11 AM

We've even made it easier to embed the share link into a nice "Codespaces" badge with HTML and Markdown. Nifty!

If your users have never created a codespace from your share link, they are recommended to create a codespace. If users already have a codespace from your share link, they are be prompted to resume their codespace.

Would a Dev Container by any other name smell as sweet?

You can now name your Dev Containers! By defining the property name in your devcontainer.json, you can set the name that will appear under the Dev Container selection on the Codespaces creation page. Even if you don't define the name property in your devcontainer.json, Codespaces will still infer a more useful name from your Dev Container file path.
Screenshot 2023-04-21 at 9 13 48 AM

Jumping Into Development From A Repository With A Comma

Do you want to collaborate on a repository, PR, or Branch? You can jump right back into your Codespace with the ',' key. No need to go to github.com/codespaces, or go to your Code<> drop-down to jump into development. Just one button and you're back to developing!

Learn More

Check out the docs:

Want to leave feedback? Make a post on our discussions page

Thank you!

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Codespaces support for JetBrains Rider (Beta)

The GitHub Codespaces plugin for the JetBrains Gateway now supports Rider as a remote IDE. .NET developers can now leverage the standardization and power of GitHub Codespaces with JetBrains Rider’s singular code indexing, navigation, and debugging capabilities.

JetBrains Rider in Gateway

GitHub Codespaces support for Rider enables multiple solution file scenarios. If there is only one solution file in a given codespace, the GitHub Codespaces plugin will automatically select that solution file. If there are multiple, the plugin will prompt the user to select which solution file they intend to use to open their project. Repositories without solution files are still compatible with Rider, however some features will be limited when no solution file is selected.

Rider solution file picker

To get started with Rider, follow the documentation for installing GitHub Codespaces into the JetBrains Gateway. Once installed, users can connect to any of their existing codespaces with Rider as their selected IDE.

We are extremely excited to deliver our top requested feature since the beta announcement of JetBrains support in GitHub Codespaces.

Additional Resources:

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Codespaces for Free and Pro Accounts

GitHub Codespaces with included free usage is now rolling out to all GitHub Free and Pro accounts. Over the coming days you'll see a new option under the green "Code" button (where you are used to getting the info you need to clone a repository) that enables you to spin up and manage cloud based development environments that free you from the pain and hassle of setting up and maintaining local configurations. Until now, only Teams and Enterprise managed GitHub Organization members had access to Codespaces.

With this update, GitHub will provide each Free plan account 120 core hours, or 60 hours of run time for a 2 core codespace, plus 15 GB of storage to use each month. Pro accounts get 180 core hours and 20 GB storage per month. You can see how much included usage is remaining for your account during the current billing period on your billing page. If you use up all of your included usage, it is easy to set up a spending limit and keep working. For more details see "About billing for GitHub Codespaces."

We hope that everyone will take Codespaces for a spin, and come join us in the community discussion space to tell us your story!

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End of the Beta – Codespaces for Individuals

This changelog only applies if you participated in the beta program for Codespaces for Individuals.

Today marks the start of the rollout of Codespaces for Free and Pro accounts, and thus the end of the beta for Individuals. Unfortunately, this also ends unlimited free use of Codespaces.

The good news is that this marks the beginning of much broader collaboration with more people who can now take advantage of included free compute and storage. All Free and Pro GitHub accounts receive a generous amount of free included usage each month.

Note that the default spending limit for GitHub Codespaces is $0. So even if you already have a payment method configured with GitHub, you will not automatically be billed unless you change your spending limit.

The rollout will take place over several days, so these changes will affect you in the coming days. For more details see “About billing for GitHub Codespaces.”

For those who participated, a heartfelt THANK YOU for all the feedback that has been instrumental to our getting to this milestone.
We hope that you’ll continue to enjoy Codespaces, and come join us in the community discussion space to tell us your story!

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GitHub Codespaces with JetBrains IDEs (Public Beta)

GitHub now supports the use of GitHub Codespaces with JetBrains IDEs via the JetBrains Gateway. After downloading the JetBrains Gateway and installing the GitHub Codespaces plugin, users will be able to connect to their codespaces with the JetBrains IDE of their choice.

jb-gateway

Once connected, users can leverage the full power of JetBrains’ IDEs in the cloud: fast, accurate code completion; integrated run and debug configurations; and unparalleled code navigation tools. Rather than needing to install each IDE on a developer machine, using GitHub Codespaces with JetBrains IDEs enables the use of any JetBrains IDEs in the cloud.

jetbrains-image

The beta supports connectivity to a codespace, private port forwarding, and a fully featured code editing experience in the following IDEs:

  • IntelliJ IDEA
  • PyCharm
  • WebStorm
  • GoLand
  • RubyMine
  • PHPStorm

Additional IDE support, codespace management tools (e.g. creation, deletion, changing the machine type), and better support for Development Container creation will be added as the beta progresses.

In order to connect to a codespace via the JetBrains Gateway, users will need the following:

Check out the documentation to learn more and get started.
For feedback or questions, create an issue in this repository and we will get back to you.

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Using Codespaces with JupyterLab (Public Beta)

GitHub is excited to announce support for using GitHub Codespaces with JupyterLab. JupyterLab is the next-generation user interface for Project Jupyter offering all the familiar building blocks of the classic Jupyter Notebook (notebook, terminal, text editor, file browser, rich outputs, etc.) in a flexible and powerful user interface.

JupyterLab in a Codespace

Using GitHub Codespaces with JupyterLab combines the delightful notebook editing, data exploration, and narrative building experiences of JupyterLab with the power, standardization, and simplicity of a codespace.

You can open any codespace in JupyterLab via the repository page or the GitHub CLI:

open in JupyterLab examples

You can also set JupyterLab as your preferred editor, enabling single click access to codespaces via JupyterLab:

set JupyterLab as default editor

JupyterLab support is even more powerful when combined with GPU-powered codespaces. Though GPU access is not yet generally available, you can request early access here.

Click here to learn more about GitHub Codespaces support for Machine Learning and AI, or jump straight into our template repository and try it out!

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Organization APIs for Codespaces are now generally available

We recently released organization-level API support that enables administrators to programmatically manage their organization-owned codespaces at scale. Today we're announcing that these APIs are generally available.

With organization APIs providing a wide range of management operations, organizations can seamlessly integrate GitHub Codespaces into their existing workflows to automate and manage their development processes at scale.

Organization-level APIs are generally available to GitHub Team and Enterprise Cloud plans. Here is a link to our documentation to get started:

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Codespace Templates

GitHub Codespaces with included free usage is now rolling out to all GitHub Free and Pro accounts. We've added experiences to quickly start new projects in a codespace using many of the frameworks you know and love. These templates are a prebuilt development environment all boxed up to work with one click, without the need to configure your development environment.
Screen Shot 2022-11-08 at 3 55 55 PM

Codespace templates come with a pre-configured devcontainer. Using a forwarded port you can see your running web application. The configuration of the devcontainer enables the necessary files to be open by default, run the services necessary, and preview the output of the application in your web editor.

Do you want to start developing in Codespaces, but you're unsure what framework to start with? Use the Blank Template to jump right into a brand new codespace! We've also included a set of starter templates for you on the Codespaces index page. You can even make your own your template for developers to use by creating your own repository template! By creating your own codespace template from a repo template, you can create a one-click, prebuilt development environment for others to use your projects.

We hope you take Codespace Templates out for a spin, and join us in the community discussion space to share your templates and collaborate with us!

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Codespaces Customizable Initial Experience

a photo of a devcontainer.json with openFiles, postAttachCommand, and onAutoForward defined

A development container allows you to create a full-featured development environment to use in your codespace. Codespaces use the devcontainer.json file to define the environment you will be working in within your codespace. We've added new features to devcontainers.json to help you customize the initial experience when you open a codespace.

Define the initial layout of your codespace with openFiles

You can use openFiles to define what files are open by default. If you specify multiple files, the files will open up in order from left to right. The first file defined will be the focused file. openFiles is specific to the Codespaces customization, and is only enabled in the Codespaces web editor for now. Use openFiles to improve your default development environment and ensure that you're setting contributors up for success!

Run scripts after your client connects to your codespace with postAttachCommand

postAttachCommand enables you to run scripts in the terminal after your client connects to the codespace. This change enables you to define multiple postAttachCommand definitions and they will run on separate terminals. This enables you to start your server and watch for changing files after launch from your devcontainer.json.

Combine these features into a full initial codespace experience

These changes to postAttachCommand, combined with the existing openPreview option in the onAutoForward property, enable you to create codespaces with a default layout that ensures a great Codespaces launch experience for users of your repository.

Read more about postAttachCommand, onAutoForward, openFiles, and openPreview on our docs pages!

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Codespaces Configuration with the Dev Container Editor

Adding a configuration for Codespaces involves adding a Development Container to a repository and editing it to meet your needs. Previously, a dev container configuration could either be written manually or created with a VS Code extension. We have now added the ability to create or edit a configuration directly from the Code drop down on a GitHub repository page.

Code dropdown showing the new Codespaces configuration option

Whether you use this mechanism, or you already have a dev container in your repository, you can now edit that configuration within GitHub using the new configuration editor. To open the editor from the code view in a repository, click the pencil icon while viewing a devcontainer.json file.

screenshot of view of devcontainer.json file

You are now editing the devcontainer.json file in place in the browser. The dev container needs to conform to the Development Container specification. The editor makes using dev container Features easy. Dev container Features provide reusable configurations for Codespaces created from the repository. Browse available features from right side of the dev container editor.

screenshot of editor and marketplace

To use a dev container feature, copy the snippet of json and place it in the features object of your devcontainer.json file. Once you have the features you want, commit those changes to the repository by clicking the "Start commit" button.

screenshot of the start commit button function

We hope this will make configuring your repositories for Codespaces significantly easier.

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Incremental Dev Container Rebuild

When you are building out a configuration for Codespaces using a dev container, the default behavior is now to do an incremental rebuild. The existing rebuild functionality is still available and has been renamed to ‘Full rebuild’.

Incremental rebuild is much faster because it builds on top of your existing docker cache, reusing common images and layers between rebuilds. This is readily apparent when adding configurations to the default container for Codespaces which is quite large.

When using VS Code, you access these commands from the command palette.

Rebuild commands in the command palette in Visual Studio Code!

The rebuild behavior prior to this change was full rebuild, which is slower but guarantees correctness because it removes all images from the virtual machine before re-pulling even unchanged images. You may occasionally want to do this after many iterations of rebuilding your configuration, and want to free up disk space or ensure your configuration is not dependent on layers that won’t be present during a clean creation of a codespace from the configuration.

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Codespaces now offers an organizational policy to restrict container images

With an organizational level policy to restrict container images, organization administrators can now control which base container images are used while creating organization-owned codespaces. This enables administrators to ensure that only verified container images are being used to create organization-owned codespaces.
allowed image policy screenshot

Organization admins can specify which images and/or image sources are allowed to be used while creating organization-owned codespaces. If the image specified in the dev container configuration does not match one of the allowed images, then subsequent codespace creation will fail asking you to update the image in your configuration. The base image policy does not apply to the default image, or the image that's used to recover a codespace if an error is introduced into a dev container configuration which prevents the container from being rebuilt.

For this release, the image policy will be applied at codespace creation and will not be applied when you rebuild a container. Support for the rebuild scenario is coming soon. We'd love your feedback on this policy and any additional policies that will help your scenarios on Codespaces discussions.

For more information, see Restricting base images for organization-owned codespaces

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Introducing the Codespaces Simple Browser

Preview Changes in Your Web Editor

Have you ever launched an application in your codespace only for the running application to get lost in a sea of browser tabs? Today we're announcing the ability to preview your running application directly in your web editor.

Update your Preview URL

Supporting this feature required a change to the URL of previewed applications from -.githubpreview.dev to -.preview.app.github.dev. This is potentially a breaking change. If you rely on a .githubpreview.dev preview url in any project you will need to update your code to reflect the new URL format.

Alternatively, the environment variable GITHUB_CODESPACES_PORT_FORWARDING_DOMAIN gives you access to the domain that your application will forward to. This will enable you to code in this variable anywhere you have hard-coded the preview URL.

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Codespaces prebuilds optimization

Today, we're releasing updates that will optimize prebuilding codespaces for your repositories. With these updates, as long as there is an active prebuild for a given repository, branch, and devcontainer combination, you will be able to spin up prebuilt codespaces for it, even if the latest prebuild workflow for that branch might be failing. This ensures fast codespace creation most of the times regardless of any breaking changes that may be adversely affecting the latest prebuild update.

Repository admins will have the option to disable this optimization if needed by going to their prebuild configuration page under advanced options.
screenshot to disable prebuild optimization

For more information, see Configuring prebuilds for your repository.

If you have any feedback to help improve this experience, be sure to post it on our discussions forum.

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Organization-level APIs for Codespaces

We recently released a set of organization-level APIs (in beta) to enable administrators to programmatically manage their organization-owned codespaces at scale. Today we're releasing support for additional organization-level APIs based on the feedback that you shared with us. With this release, we've added support for the following REST API commands:

  • Manage organization-level codespaces secrets
    • List organization secrets
    • Get an organization public key
    • Get an organization secret
    • Create or update an organization secret
    • Delete an organization secret
    • List selected repositories for an organization secret
    • Set selected repositories for an organization secret
    • Add selected repository to an organization secret
    • Remove selected repository from an organization secret
  • Manage access control for organization-owned codespaces
    • Enable Codespaces for all members of the organization
    • Enable Codespaces for select members of the organization
    • Enable Codespaces for all members and outside collaborators of the organization
    • Disable Codespaces for the organization

Organization-level APIs are in beta for GitHub Team and Enterprise Cloud plans. Here are links to our documentation to get started:

If you have any feedback to help improve this experience, be sure to post it on our discussions forum.

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