Epic: Restart workspaces directly from VS Code Desktop

[loujaybee]

Press Release

⚠️ To be confirmed (including user + customer quotes)

Context

ℹ️ What thinking lead us to starting this work?

VS Code Desktop is useful to some users because they can:

• Re-use keybindings, (easier) access to localhost.
• Access to the extension marketplace.
• Desktop-like shortcuts (e.g. CMD + Tab to change windows).

This is useful for users who don't like working in a browser, and want an experience that is already as close to their local experience as possible. However, the current VS Code Desktop has some rough edges, as compared with a simple desktop flow, particularly when it comes to opening (and then restarting a session).

Value

ℹ️ What is the impact to a user, or Gitpod?

We want to close the gap between the experience from working on VS Code Desktop in Gitpod, and the general local experience. We commonly hear from users that restarting sessions is quite challenging, as the user has to leave VS Code Desktop go to the browser, find the workspace, and restart. This is especially challenging if your workspace start time is long, or you have a lot of setup (e.g. other clients, like database, or SSH connections to re-establish).

Restart an open workspace from VS Code Desktop directly. Currently timed out sessions have to be re-opened from the browser, however this should be as simple as clicking a button to restart / re-connect the session.

Potential Solutions / Investigations

Timebox the investigation: Up until Monday the 6th March.

Internal document on list of potential solutions.

Acceptance Criteria

⚠️ Dependent on chosen solution

In Scope

⚠️ Dependent on chosen solution

Out of scope

⚠️ Dependent on chosen solution

Measurement

• Qualitative surveying / interviewing of the users experiences
• No quantitative measures defined (to be confirmed)

Relates to:

• Epic: Private beta of initial public APIs #10798
• Epic: Prebuild Public APIs #15213
• Epic: Resource Usage (Billing) Public APIs #11335
• Epic: Automate off + onboarding via Public API (users, teams & projects) #10799
• Epic: Personal Access Tokens #14280
• Epic: Create external workspace dashboards or clients (e.g. CLI or IdP) via Public API #10427
• Epic: Service accounts (Auth tokens not tied to users) #15419
• Epic: Foundations for Fine Grained Authorization #15632
• Epic: Automated workspace creation (e.g. in CI pipelines) via Public API #15829

[loujaybee]

https://github.com/gitpod-io/customers/issues/57

[mittalyashu]

Please add this option, it's really time consuming to open Gitpod dashboard, every-time the workspace times out.

Due to this limitation, I have to stick to single workspace use, for working on multiple tasks. Instead of using new workspace per task.

[loujaybee]

Update: I'm this out of Q4 on the public roadmap. It's highly likely we'll implement restart workspace, possibly as a standalone issue than a larger roadmap item.

However, regarding start workspace + workspace management, this topic requires some more consideration. Gitpod has many custom built interfaces: dashboard, chrome extension, JetBrains Gateway etc. We need to spend a bit more time in figuring out the best place to expose workspace management. However, the upcoming public API should now allow our customers and users to explore their own custom integrations, VS Code Extensions, CLI's, dashboards etc to build different interfaces that suit or work for their use cases. We should revisit this work ideally after the Public API is shipped, and after discussions about the best way to surface workspace management to users.

[loujaybee]

Scoping this issue down to only restart.

[loujaybee]

Comment(s) from user discussion (internal link):

User: I missed a chance at recording it this morning, but described the flow below I'm talking about: Log on for the day, start up workspace for a PR I need to rebase main into. That goes fine, build is triggered. While I wait, I jump over to a PR to review. Come back to workspace I started ~ 15 minutes earlier to check something. I get the alert in vscode desktop that it's disconnected. I click retry, but that gives an error message w/ a few options, but none that I can find that would just restart the workspace. I end up with the editor in a disconnected state - and I don't see an option to start the workspace back up. Then I jump over to the browser, find my workspaces list on gitpod, and start the right one and wait for it again (sometimes that feels pretty quick, but sometimes it's several minutes). Another side effect is I end up with a bunch of abandoned vs code windows and gitpod tabs in the browser to maintain.

Lou: Would it be fair to summarise that the friction you’re talking about is mostly related to getting a VS Code Desktop workspace restarted?

1. Start a workspace
2. Workspace starting up
3. Gitpod workspace automation
4. Workspace times out
5. Find and restart workspace <- friction 🎯
6. Workspace starting up
7. Gitpod workspace automation

Step 5 reads like the most painful for you right now?

User: Yah, if 5 was simpler, that would help. The duration of waiting for 5 can be a big part of the friction though too (I think I waited ~ 8 minutes today for one to restart after timing out).

[jeanp413]

Related https://gitpod.slack.com/archives/C01KGM9BH54/p1676498720629379

[loujaybee]

I'm going to move this out of team IDE board for now, we'll create an issue for the proposed "local SSH solution" this solution might fix issues with VS Code Desktop restarts (as originally intended in this issue) so then we can either pull this issue back in to the working stack or close it. Alternatively we can also pick this issue back up when the create workspace public API is working, as that should unblock us in implementing this. Either way this issue is not yet ready to be worked on, so removing from the current board for now.

[bradleybeighton]

I get the same error, is there an easy work around for this?

[mustard-mh]

I get the same error, is there an easy work around for this?

Hey @bradleybeighton , which issue are you referring? This one #9221 (comment) ?

[bradleybeighton]

@mustard-mh yes exactly, I can't re-connect to the gitpod instance when its disconnected using VS Code desktop

[mustard-mh]

@bradleybeighton Could you follow the troubleshooting after you failed to re-connect to help us debug and understand your faced issue 🙏 ? (Workspace ID should be helpful too)

[github-actions]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.