Re:Gitlab Web IDE Beta, Powered by Visual Studio Code
by lozenge on Wednesday December 21, 2022 @05:01AM
(#34078694)
Right, I just realised the GitLab Web IDE is running fully in the browser, so there is no Terminal. Maybe they are considering a later version which is more like Codespaces, letting you develop and run your code, keeping the browser as the user interface.
Re:Gitlab Web IDE Beta, Powered by Visual Studio Code
by lioeters on Wednesday December 21, 2022 @06:01AM
(#34079088)
> Known issues
> The Web Terminal and Live Preview are not available in the Web IDE Beta.
> These features may become available at a later date.
Re:Gitlab Web IDE Beta, Powered by Visual Studio Code
by eschurter on Wednesday December 21, 2022 @08:32AM
(#34080483)
Hi, GitLab PM for the Web IDE and Remote Development here! You're right, the Web IDE itself is running fully in the browser, but if you try to open a new Terminal panel you'll see that it can be configured to connect to a remote host. The setup (for now) requires a bit of manual config on your end but we're working on making that easier in the future!
This blog post gives a little more high level overview of the current functionality and where we're headed: https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2022/12/15/get-ready-for-new-g...
For a deeper dive you can check out our Remote Development [direction page](https://about.gitlab.com/direction/create/editor/remote_deve...) and [documentation](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/remote_development/)
Microsoft's strategy is to build a moat around VS Code/GitHub. Compared to GitLab, they have:
* Brand recognition of VS Code
* VS Code extension gallery that only VS Code can connect to
* Buttons in the Desktop version of VS Code to connect to GitHub Codespaces, Azure etc
* MS-written closed source extensions- Pylance, parts of OmniSharp, Remote SSH, Remote Containers, Remote WSL, Live Share, GitHub Copilot, IntelliCode, Python WASM In the Browser, GitHub Codespaces integration.
* Control over the VS Code API. They can add just the functionality their extensions need and nothing more.
* They own the LSP specs. They can add just the functionality that VS Code implements and nothing more.
* Control over the VS Code "proposed" API. If you want to use these APIs in your extension, you have to be whitelisted by Microsoft (or ask users to install a non-VS Code version of VS Code). Gitlab can offer a Web IDE, they can't offer integration with desktop VS Code to provide those nice features like desktop-level keyboard shortcuts, Git Clone, compare with working tree, etc as that would use the "proposed" APIs.