My (infuriating) experience with GitHub Codespaces
Tags: github, vscode, cloud, ide
Published: 2020-09-11 13:48:41

---
title: My (infuriating) experience with GitHub Codespaces
published: true
description: TL;DR - I broke GitHub's Cloud IDE so you don't have to :)
tags: github, vscode, cloud, ide
cover_image: https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/vqlzxwwujnjktnvdpmjb.png
---

**UPDATE: The show stopper issues mentioned here have been fixed already. However, I'm still leaving this up for everyone.**

Yes, this cover image is a call for help because GitHub hasn't answered me for two straight days on stuck developer containers that I can't delete. And yes, I broke the entire Cloud IDE by trying to edit a Pull Request. Joy!


## Let's wind back a little

Around 2-5 days ago, I got the most rarest thing to ever happen in my entire life.

*A literal early access at GitHub Codespaces. Wow! The GitHub Gods has blessed this good-for-nothing can't-code-for-shit college student early access for their upcoming Cloud IDE!*

![An image to flex on this blog](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/nqio9c74n9hh7pl6h5g6.png)

And of course, as part of my ever-unwielding excitement, I immediately went to one of my projects, and tried it out for a few hours... Until it broke down. 

Before I tell you how I broke one GitHub's killer features arriving later this year (if we're lucky enough), I want to share my key takeaways and what I hate on the service at the moment.

## What I enjoyed so far

If you followed my old blog post before, the entire point of GitHub Codespaces is a easily-accessible way to contribute to a project, all without leaving GitHub itself. 

{% link https://dev.to/sr229/github-launched-their-own-web-ide-does-that-mean-atom-is-dead-5440 %}

Sure enough, this comes neatly as a option in the "Code" Button.

![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/wqw8u1l7o4nstjd4nn1d.png)

This opens a empty dialogue with a "New Codespace" button. Once you click on "New Codespace", GitHub does what most Cloud IDEs does, but it does it automatically, setting up the stack for you.

![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/y1docdswz2gnb9kmttgs.png)


The entire stack setup does take a good amount of time (3-5 minutes on my benchmark), but it does make up for what it is advertised, a full Visual Studio Code experience right in the browser, already set up with your own credentials. Most execs would die for this kind of integration (which other cloud IDEs like [Gitpod](https://gitpod.io) already does as well).

![](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/487996410982039554/752699648614858893/unknown.png)

And after the long wait, you are greeted with Visual Studio Code, which you can choose between Insiders and Stable within the platform as well.

The default experience is a special light theme for Visual Studio Code which uses GitHub's color palette. I would like to express that this light theme isn't painful in the eyes (that's a major undertaking considering I am a avid Dark Theme user).

*Hey Microsoft, release this as a proper theme, please!*

![](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/487996410982039554/752702424481005608/unknown.png)

There is also a GitHub Dark VS Code theme as well but I didn't bother to take a screenshot sadly, but it looks very pretty.


Of course Codespaces also checks if you have a `devcontainer.json` and a custom stack already for VS Code Remote, which GitHub Codespaces will happily use instead of automatically determining your stack. Unfortunately, I haven't tested it since I had no use for it since the default Codespaces stack already does for me.


## Now sh*t gets ugly

Of course, it's not always sunshine and rainbows for such a early product. Once I started opening a Codespace based on a PR, it started to return 404s. And if I try to make another, this happened.

Apparently, Codespaces **breaks** if you try to edit someone's PR which you don't have write access to, and now I have two dangling codespaces that I can't delete.

![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/i96bfktddtk3ixa4iur6.png)

And to make matters worse, I called on GitHub Support to clear out the non-existent codespaces that are linked to my account, and oh joy!

**I haven't recieved a reply from Support 2 days ago! Shocking!**

![Alt Text](https://dev-to-uploads.s3.amazonaws.com/i/e5uyr4xohxy7r4lc1bbo.png)


After that, I just gave up.


## Conclusion

Codespaces has a lot of ways to go, with that kind of breaking bugs, I won't touch it with a ten-foot pole, but that VS Code experience is a bit alluring. But still, you get my point.


While they're fixing that, I'll stick to one of my favorite Cloud IDEs of all time, Gitpod, or the always 99.9% available `localhost`.