Visual Studio Codespaces

May 21, 2020

MsBuild 2020 is happening right now and I'm trying to catch and learn many interesting stuff from there. By now, the most exciting part was Visual Studio Codespaces, previously known as VS Online. I have already tried it about half a year ago and, as I remember, then it allowed only to create host machine in the cloud. But now it is possible to create free self-hosted environment and, basically, connect from anywhere to development machine. Well, there are some asterisks.
As usually, there are some good guidance on docs.microsoft, here is a good place to start. For cloud environment process is relatively trivial: create microsoft account, create azure account (at this step you need to add credit card credentials), open Visual Studio Online and create host. Of course, it take a lot of time between page redirection and entering account credentials. In Safari this page stuck in endless authorization loop, firefox also refused it to open, use Chrome. Then in desktop VS Code install "Remote Explorer" extension and (also after endless login in microsoft, azure and github account) it is possible to connect into cloud machine and use it as local. Well, almost. Here is list of things, that I have tried, but didn't work well:

• debugging .net core mvc project supposed to run browser and magically (I still cant't quite wrap my head around it) open it in new browser tab for debugging. At least, this is how it worked in presentation, but I always got error terminal, that localhost:5001 is refused to open.
• my idea for server side self-hosting environment was to use old raspberry Pi, that is collecting dust in a locker for last three years. I put it out, set up new raspian sd card and connected to router. Hint: since 2016 ssh is disabled by default, create empty ssh file in sd card root to enable it. touch ssh. Then I used this manual to install everything needed, but my Pi (original model B) has old arm process (armv6l) and vso tool is incompatibable. Based on this issue, only 64-bit raspberry Pi is possible to handle this and 64bit capable distributive should be used (so, not a raspian)
• my ultimate goal was to turn iPad to fully capable dev machine by running VS Code in the browser and connect to my actual laptop. I can do this, however, there were hiccups. Safari (even in iOS 13.4) didn't work, only Chrome. Address and tab bars were unhidable, eating  valuable space. I connected to windows host from ipad with magic keyboard and key bindings were completely incorrect. And unicode symbols, that were used to show file type in file explorer, were wrong or misplaced. It was hilarious to see "🐯appsettings.json" and "☎️Startup.cs". Scrolling is not working (crucial for terminal windows, there are not scrolling bars there). Syntax highlightning is not working. And, as I aforementioned, debugging does not start browser (this one is inconsistent - once it actually started downloading file authenticate-port-forwarder). Connecting to mac was successful only on third try. The hole experience is a mess and not ready not only to production use, but for hobby development as well.

BUT This is actual, real and powerful IDE, running in browser! And I didn't use Edge browser¹, hopefully Safari support will come soon. On one of questions in VS codespaces Q&A videos, host called iPad support as one of their nearest priorities. That would be awesome🤩