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Do you use cloud dev envs?

Wondering how many people here use cloud dev environments like cloud9 (now on aws), codeanywhere, etc? How are you liking them?

If you don't know what I'm talking about, cloud dev environments essentially replace setting up dev stack/tools on your local machine. You connect remotely to them (different depending on provider) and they essentially host your development environment(s).

I personally have used a bunch of them and really love the concept, though the execution is so different with every provider that I have yet to find one that's perfect for me. The key things I've always really cared about with them:

  • Self contained workspaces for each project. I don't want to share one big workspace for all of my projects. That's half the value of cloud dev envs for me.
  • Easily created, cloned, templated. I love making a template out of a workspace (often including state), it speeds up my workflow hugely. If I can't do that, it's a huge pain point.
  • Unique URL per workspace for me to run web apps on with SSL included. Bonus points if I can set permissions/password protect that with a click.
  • Full SSH and root access. I want to be able to do (almost) whatever I want with my dev environment.
  • At least some option to have it always on. Sometimes I need to leave it up for clients or other devs to test against for a day or two.
  • Configuring resources per workspace, or something like it. Some of my projects need a lot, some need next to nothing.
  • A browser based IDE is nice for when I need to hop on from a random machine, but usually I prefer to use vs code to connect remotely over ssh.

What do you love/hate about them?

Do you use cloud dev envs?
  1. Yes, I already do
  2. No, and I don't plan to
  3. No, but I'm tempted
Vote
posted to Icon for group Developers
Developers
on August 17, 2020
  1. 2

    I'd love to use Github / Visual Studio Codespaces but I'm overwhelmed trying to figure out how to create the configuration for my Laravel environment.

    1. 1

      That's exactly the problem I've had with some of them. Cloud9 use to be awesome, until they became part of the AWS ecosystem and suddenly became as complicated to use as all the rest of AWS.

      VS codespaces you need to use Azure and understand it's ridiculously complicated billing and resources (I just got burned for $500 on azure recently, bleh). Github codepsaces I haven't tried yet, but it seems much more heavily aimed at open source and handling PRs and stuff really quickly, rather than an awesome dev env for one dev.

      What's been the most confusing part for you?

  2. 2

    if you use full ssh, get a simple node and get a docker container/image for each and done?

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