I use the current web editor a lot for small changes on repositories I don't want to full clone.

For instance if you need to change a value in a configuration file, you can make the change in a new branch, have the CI pass on it, check if every was fine, and merge/deploy as needed. All from the web interface.

I'm sure some people use it do crazy complex changes, but I see it as convenience for scope limited tasks more than anything.

GitHub Codespaces and VSCode remote development solve this problem by using docker and optionally docker compose to create reproducible development environments.

GitHub is using Codespaces itself [0], which is a huge Rails app with tons of infrastructure behind it I’d assume.

[0]: https://github.blog/2021-08-11-githubs-engineering-team-move...

GitLab PM and OP author here!

You're right, the client-side instance of VS Code is only a piece of the full "IDE" puzzle. You can learn more about our direction for providing server-side runtime on our Remote Development direction page: https://about.gitlab.com/direction/create/editor/remote_deve... More on that in the near future.

GitLab Team member here! You can set up different environments with whatever dependency your application needs. GitLab CI can build/deploy your application to the right environment depending on various factors. You can also look at GitLab Review Apps, which "is a collaboration tool that assists with providing an environment to showcase product changes."

See: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/ci/review_apps/

CI.