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Example apps

Remote IDEs: Visual Studio Code Server

Remote IDEs give developers a full development environment in the cloud, reachable from a browser, which suits cloud-native development, collaboration, and education. Editing sessions are bursty, so an IDE that scales to zero when idle and resumes in milliseconds bills for coding time rather than for the whole day.

Visual Studio Code is a source-code editor developed by Microsoft. It includes support for debugging, syntax highlighting, intelligent code completion, snippets, code refactoring, and embedded Git. It features a Code server, which allows you to run Visual Studio Code remotely and access it through a web browser or your local Visual Studio Code client.

This guide explains how to create and deploy a Visual Studio Code server app. To run it, follow these steps:

1. Install the unikraft CLI. You need a BuildKit builder. The easiest way to get one is via Docker. Alternatively, you can also directly set up and use BuildKit, see the quick start.

2. Clone the examples repository and cd into the examples/visual-studio-code-server directory:

   Code
   git clone https://github.com/unikraft-cloud/examples
   cd examples/visual-studio-code-server/

Make sure to log into Unikraft Cloud and pick a metro close to you. This guide uses fra (Frankfurt, 🇩🇪):

Code
unikraft login

When done, invoke the following command to deploy this app on Unikraft Cloud:

Code
unikraft volume create --set metro=fra --set name=code-workspace --set size=1G

unikraft build . --output <my-org>/visual-studio-code-server:latest
unikraft run --metro fra \
  -m 2G \
  -p 443:8443/tls+http \
  --scale-to-zero policy=on,cooldown-time=4000,stateful=true \
  -e PGUID=0 \
  -e PGID=0 \
  -e PASSWORD=unikraft \
  -e SUDO_PASSWORD=unikraft \
  -e DEFAULT_WORKSPACE="/workspace" \
  --volume code-workspace:/workspace \
  --image <my-org>/visual-studio-code-server:latest

The output shows the instance address and other details:

Code
metro:        fra
name:         code-server-6gxsp
uuid:         c1a619a0-e222-4042-94b8-ba4b39353417
state:        starting
image:        <my-org>/visual-studio-code-server
resources:
  memory:     2048MiB
  vcpus:      1
service:
  uuid:       4a0866e4-3bec-3666-c4aa-61672de542e2
  name:       blue-shape-chmxf1g4
  domains:
  - fqdn:     blue-shape-chmxf1g4.fra.unikraft.app
networks:
- uuid:       dcec209f-31a6-b355-a88e-f5ac3edfa20e
  private-ip: 10.0.0.49
  mac:        12:b0:ec:d2:df:1c
timestamps:
  created:    just now

This will create a volume for data persistence, and mount it at /workspace inside the VM.

In this case, the instance name is code-server-6gxsp and the address is https://blue-shape-chmxf1g4.fra.unikraft.app. They are different for each run. Enter the provided address into your browser of choice to access the Code server instance.

You can list information about the volume by running:

Code
unikraft volumes list

Code
METRO  NAME            STATE    SIZE    CREATED
fra    code-workspace  mounted  1.0GiB  13 minutes ago

You can list information about the instance by running:

Code
unikraft instances list

Code
METRO  NAME               STATE    IMAGE                               ARGS  MEMORY  VCPUS  FQDN                                  CREATED
fra    code-server-6gxsp  standby  <my-org>/visual-studio-code-server        2.0GiB  1      blue-shape-chmxf1g4.fra.unikraft.app  2 minutes ago

When done, you can remove the instance:

Code
unikraft instances delete code-server-6gxsp

The volume isn't removed by default, so you can recreate the instance and still have access to your old data. Remove it using:

Code
unikraft volume delete code-workspace

Learn more

Use the --help option for detailed information on using Unikraft Cloud:

Code
unikraft --help

Or visit the CLI Reference.