Introduction

GitLab is introducing a new feature called workspaces - on-demand, cloud-based development environments. This feature aims to provide a consistent and secure developer experience and streamline developer onboarding, reducing the time it takes for a developer to contribute to a codebase.

What is a Workspace?

A workspace is a personal, ephemeral development environment in the cloud, created using centrally managed and curated dependencies defined in code. This feature brings the configuration, orchestration, and management of remote development environments into GitLab for the first time.

Creating a Workspace

To create a workspace in GitLab, you'll need a cloud platform or self-hosted Kubernetes cluster and a devfile to define your environment in a file. Once you've created your workspace, you can launch the Web IDE with a single click and start working.

Beta Release and Future Plans

Workspaces are currently in beta for public projects, and GitLab plans to inject credentials and address other points of friction to make the feature even easier for developers to adopt. They also plan to work on connecting to workspaces via SSH from desktop IDEs, support for alternative editors, configuration options for usage limits, and support for architectures other than amd64.

Feedback

GitLab welcomes feedback on how users are utilizing workspaces, what features they find most important, and any issues they encounter. They encourage users to share their thoughts in the public feedback issue.

Disclaimer: This article contains information related to upcoming products, features, and functionality, and should not be relied upon for purchasing or planning purposes.