code.multiverse.io

What?

Explanatory video

The aim is to create a "remote development service" for apprentices, so that they can work in a container on a virtual machine.

Why?

This means that apprentices can always access a consistent development experience:

• no installation issues

• using VS Code direclty in their browser

• no lists of stuff to unblock for clients

• use the terminal to interact with any website (including github)

As http requests originate in the VM, problems of acessing e.g. github completely go away.

There are a few possible futures for this:

• it is used for apprentices who are having technical issues, can't get stuff unblocked or installed

• it is used to give a turnkey service to certain clients and their apprentices

• it is used as standard for all apprentices

How?

• A cloud VM exposes an API at code.multiverse.io

• When visited, it provisions a Docker container running VS Code on Ubuntu and exposes $PORT to the VM network

• The user is redirected to $PORT.code.multiverse.io where they are proxied to localhost:$PORT in the VM

• And they can dev away

Next

Auth, persisted storage, auto-scaling, auto-kill dead containers, security

To recreate the demo

1. Make sure you have Vagrant and Virtualbox installed

2. Open a terminal in the project root and run vagrant up

3. SSH into the VM with vagrant ssh multiverse-box

4. Install node/npm, nginx and docker (you're in Ubuntu)

5. Replace /etc/nginx/nginx.conf with the nginx.conf file in this repo, and then sudo nginx -t && systemctl start nginx to test and load the config.

6. From within the VM, cd repos/code-server-api and npm i && npm run dev

7. Back on your host machine, edit /etc/hosts to point code.multiverse.io at 192.168.56.10

8. Now visit code.multiverse.io in your browser