Cloud-based developer platform Gitpod recently introduced the open-source project OpenVSCode Server, licensed under MIT. This enables any developer to run upstream and stable VS Code IDE in any modern web browser.
The launch of GitHub Codespaces established a standard for browser-based, remote, and cloud-based developer environments. However, Microsoft has not released the VS Code remote server implementation as open source. Sven Efftinge, co-founder and CEO of Gitpod, mentioned that Gitpod was approached by multiple organizations and individual developers asking how Gitpod always ran the latest VS Code in Gitpod.
OpenVSCode Server runs on the same architecture that drives both Gitpod and GitHub Codespaces. An OpenVSCode Server build gets triggered with a new release within 24 hours of a pull-request merging into microsoft/vscode. A Hacker News conversation revealed the technical aspects of OpenVSCode Server, which referenced the related documentation elaborating that the OpenVSCode server runs a web workbench, a remote server, and remote CLI. An architectural walkthrough is also available at Sourcegraph.
OpenVSCode Server project is officially supported by GitLab, VMware, Uber, SAP, Sourcegraph, RStudio, SUSE, Tabnine, Render, and TypeFox.
The Tech community on Twitter was quick to take notice of this announcement; as of this writing, the tweet from Gitpod's official handle has got 804 likes, 257 retweets, 64 quote tweets.
One of the Twitter users, Phillip Carter, tweeted,
"Great to see one of my favourite developer tools get better, broaden their ecosystem, and put OSS and community first!"
Twitter user and CTO of the CNCF, Chris Aniszczyk, tweeted,
"Kudos to Gitpod on launching a better alternative to codeserver plumbing and making cloud native IDEs better for everyone."
The GitHub stars history reflected the interest of the tech community. Twitter user and speaker Geoff Huntley tweeted a screenshot of the star history showing an exponential increase in the number of stars for the OpenVSCode Server project repository.
Efftinge has further expanded this announcement in a collaborated blog post with Johannes Landgraf, co-founder & CCO at Gitpod, and Anton Kosyakov, principal software engineer at Gitpod.
Interested readers can get started with OpenVSCode Server by using the deployment guides available here. To provide feedback or connect with other users, one can follow the discussions on GitHub or join the discord community here.