GitHub Codespace Support

dzmitry-lahoda · April 10, 2023, 5:35pm

I tried several solution with GitHub Codespace support. They all suffer from one or more issues making these unusable.

/tmp and/or /nix directories owners/acl are messed up by features installed
docker-in-docker feature fails to install
cannot get shell with all package and env variables when codespace starts, so VS Extensions cannot find binaries, and locally things fail to compile because env variables are not set
some extensions are written in some Go code which hacks VS code setting to hook into package for VS code plugins

On top of some old solutions I tried half year ago, just tried today:

Codespaces / devcontainer - devenv - it messes up with docker-in-docker feature
https://github.com/devcontainers/features/tree/main/src/nix - it messes up with /nix owner/acl and there is not way to setup home configuration or shell

So what are option people use?

Ideal scenario is support of docker in docker, on VS code start home/devshell installed all packages and setup all env variables, and runs all services if needed. And share stuff with devshell from my flake.

I was able to hack good stuff on home-manager activated within codespace dockerfile. Works well for me.

Sandro · April 10, 2023, 7:54pm

https://github.com/NixOS/nix/issues/6680

dzmitry-lahoda · April 10, 2023, 8:07pm

I was here. It really works now.

github.com

ComposableFi/composable/blob/15eb5029ca32fb3ded71f47d2544285c9695a6b0/Dockerfile

FROM mcr.microsoft.com/vscode/devcontainers/base:0.202.7-bullseye
ARG USER=vscode
ARG UID=1000
ARG GID=${UID}
ARG NIX_VERSION=2.14.1
ARG NIX_INSTALLER=https://releases.nixos.org/nix/nix-${NIX_VERSION}/install
ARG CHANNEL_URL=https://github.com/NixOS/nixpkgs/archive/aaa1c973c8c189195e1b1a702d3b74dbcde91538.tar.gz
ARG CACHIX_NAME=composable-community

SHELL [ "/bin/bash", "-o", "pipefail", "-o", "errexit", "-c" ]

RUN export DEBIAN_FRONTEND=noninteractive && \
    apt-get update && \
    apt-get install --yes --no-install-recommends \
    ca-certificates \
    curl \
    sudo \
    xz-utils

RUN usermod --append --groups sudo ${USER} --shell /bin/bash && \

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github.com

ComposableFi/composable/blob/15eb5029ca32fb3ded71f47d2544285c9695a6b0/.devcontainer.json

{
	"name": "composable",
	"hostRequirements": {
		"memory": "20gb",
		"cpus": 8
	},
	"build": {
		"dockerfile": "Dockerfile",
		"context": "."
	},
	"features": {
		"ghcr.io/devcontainers/features/docker-in-docker:2": {},
	},
	"postStartCommand": "sudo chmod +x /home/vscode/.nix-profile/bin/setfacl && sudo chmod 1777 /tmp/ && sudo /home/vscode/.nix-profile/bin/setfacl  --remove-default  /tmp",
	"customizations": {
		"vscode": {
			"extensions": [
				"adam-bender.commit-message-editor",
				"bbenoist.Nix",
				"bierner.markdown-mermaid",

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github.com

ComposableFi/composable/blob/15eb5029ca32fb3ded71f47d2544285c9695a6b0/flake/home-configurations.nix

{ self, withSystem, inputs, lib, options, flake-parts-lib, specialArgs, config
}: {
  flake = {
    homeConfigurations = let user = "vscode";
    in (withSystem "x86_64-linux"
      ({ config, self', inputs', pkgs, devnetTools, this, subnix, ... }: {
        vscode = let codespace = with pkgs; [ cachix acl direnv ];
        in self.inputs.home-manager.lib.homeManagerConfiguration {
          inherit pkgs;
          modules = [{
            home = {
              username = user;
              sessionVariables = subnix.subattrs;
              homeDirectory = "/home/${user}";
              stateVersion = "22.11";
              packages = with pkgs;
                with self'.packages;
                [
                  clang
                  nodejs

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We fixed lot of things, including backing same nix store cache into docker as used by default dev shell and making tmp/nix folder work. So I can nix develop/run/build and arion docker in Codespace pretty well.

The only still fixing how to init envvars well. As far as I see there is question on how to do it with home-manager

Started here Home-manager doesn't seem to recognize sessionVariables

Ended trying to run on Codespace hooks source /home/vscode/.nix-profile/etc/profile.d/hm-session-vars.sh, always fails.