Version:v0.24.1+2c843f4

An enterprise prospect is requesting that VS Code Desktop icon be configurable. i..e, removed in certain templates.

Their feedback was that there are many development teams that never will use VS Code. e.g., Java, data science, etc. so do not want to confuse or annoy end users about using Coder.

Related#8032

Implementation notes

Written by@bpmct

To me, the most natural way to do this is per-agent. Instead of specific flags to disable each “desktop app” (let’s assume we will have many down the road such as JetBrains, RDP, etc), I suggest we have a field on the agent that defaults to specific icons showing up.

resource “coder_agent” “data_science” {# …  helper_apps= []# disable all}

And by default, agents have this:

resource “coder_agent” “data_science” {# …  helper_apps= [“vs-code”, “port-forward”, “ssh”]}

By “default,” I mean the default for the provider. Not our example templates.

One interesting side-effect of this approach is it allows template authors “opt-in” to new apps appearing on their dashboard if they hardcode the helper apps in their template OR if we don’t make it a default property for the agent. This allows us to add more functionalityvs-code-insiders without being concerned about the impact it has on existing deployments that upgrade: “wait, my users are now seeing a new button on the dashboard I don’t want them to see”.

Open to other ideas though!