New Gitpod from sub directory of a (mono) repo

[schickling]

Similar to how GitHub has the template repository feature I'd like Gitpod to support a similar workflow by being able to create a new Gitpod from a sub directory of a (mono) repo.

This workflow is already possible "locally" with the following terminal command:

curl https://codeload.github.com/contentlayerdev/contentlayer/tar.gz/main | \
  tar -xz --strip=2 contentlayer-main/examples/mdx

Use case

Many projects (such as https://github.com/vercel/next.js and https://github.com/vercel/next.js) keep both their source code as well as example projects in the same repo. In order to try out an example (or investigate a bug report or create a bug repro) I often want to start of with a new Gitpod project that only consists of a given example folder (e.g. this one).

There would be a few downsides of cloning the entire project repo:

• Cloning takes much longer than downloading the tar.gz
• Installing the project dependencies (e.g. via yarn) should only install the dependencies needed for the single example - not all other dependencies of the (mono) repo.

Bonus feature: Allow me to create a new GH repo from the project I'm working on (e.g. to report a bug using the created reproduction).

Thoughts on "API design"

It would be great if Gitpod could simply extend the URL-based create flow (i.e. gitpod.io/#github.com/owner/repo) to also allow for "copy & paste"-able sub dir URLs (e.g. https://github.com/contentlayerdev/contentlayer/tree/main/examples/mdx)

[corneliusludmann]

Just a tiny note: Using a URL like https://github.com/contentlayerdev/contentlayer/tree/main/examples/mdx as context URL is supported already:

https://gitpod.io/#https://github.com/contentlayerdev/contentlayer/tree/main/examples/mdx

However, it just opens the file in the editor or the folder (in this case) in the tree view. It does not change the root folder for OpenVSX. But you can run $ open examples/mdx/ in the terminal (or use File → Open Folder...) for this.

It would be worth thinking about it if we should change the behavior here, IMHO.

But even when we open the given folder in OpenVSX (and probably use the .gitpod.yml file in this subfolder so that you don't need to install all the dependencies for the mono repo) you still need to clone the whole repo.

[stale]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[schickling]

👋 @Stale

[stale]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[schickling]

Still relevant

[jldec]

Adding WebApp since this is related to multi-repo.