CDEs with aPrebuilds feature provides a way to use their workspaces as short-lived/ephemeral environnement on large/complex repositories.

Coder's closest way of achieving something similar is throughstartup scripts, which is fine for small code base.
But it doesn't works well for large repositories.

As far as I know, there is currently 3 CDEs implementing it:

• Codespaces:https://docs.github.com/en/codespaces/prebuilding-your-codespaces
• Gitpod:https://www.gitpod.io/docs/configure/projects/prebuilds
• Hocus:https://hocus.dev/docs/prebuilds/

It usually works by building the main branches, (let's say themain/master branch)
The "output" is stored and then any users can get a fresh workspace from it.
Prebuilds are linked to the commit hash they have been built with.

Theses fresh workspaces may contain:

• Object / bytecode files, final binaries / artefacts
• Any dependencies such as libraries/modules, container images, etc
• Debug related files -> symbols/map files, etc...
• Indexes/Caches from developer's tools
• ?

From the 3 CDE above, a prebuild may be triggered via:

• push/merge
• Scheduled
• Manual trigger
• On file change (like devcontainer.json)
• Every N commits
• ?

Why Prebuilds are worth to be implemented

The inability of using short lived/ephemeral workspaces on large repos have several impacts :

• Long lived workspaces may drift and result in "works on my machine" issues.
• Context switching takes time (reviewing PR, hotfix an issue, etc)
• ?

Large companies tend to have large and complex repositories.
Implementing it may help them significantly reduce time spent on the two issues above.

Could also:

• Reduce resources consumption peaks (avoiding N builds by N developers when their workspaces starts)
• ?

Implementation ?

All CDEs above currently supports only one isolation model and/or infrastructure.
Coder doesn't make any assumptions on neither of the infra or isolation model.
Which could make it hard for coder to implement such a feature.

What are you thoughts about it ?

Resources:

• https://github.blog/2022-06-15-prebuilding-codespaces-is-generally-available/