Feedback Issue: Multi-repo workspace configuration

[jldec]

Objective

The aim of this issue is to gather feedback on the Beta feature: Multi-repo workspace configuration.
Please add your feedback in comments below -- any feedback is welcome!

More information

• Docs
• RFC
• Roadmap Issue
• Pull Request

[mikenikles]

I wanted to use this feature to open all template-* repositories in a single workspace so we can apply changes across all repos with minimal effort. See PR gitpod-io/template-all#2.

I encountered various issues:

• API rate limit exceeded #8952
• The GitHub Pull Requests & Issues extension repeatedly asks me to grant permissions
• The browser crashes after a few minutes

What was the maximum number of repositories multi-repo workspaces were tested with? I'd like to add a disclaimer to the docs to warn people not to exceed that number.

[axonasif]

It would be nice to have a property for the sub-repo dir to be opened with a new VSCODE instance with the new dir as its root. Same thing as running code dir command.

An example use case(there are more): https://discord.com/channels/816244985187008514/960820692876681256/960836288171360256

[ibrah3m]

I recommend providing an option to make us able to pass/get the main configuration from
environment-variables like the example below
mainConfiguration: $MY_VAR // should already exist or be passed by the URL

[axonasif]

You can pass env vars via URL: https://www.gitpod.io/docs/environment-variables#provide-env-vars-via-url
However, I guess this parameter does not support env vars now.

[ThePaulMcBride]

When working on local VSCode the workspaceLocation option doesn't seem to do anything. I have to navigate to the file described and then it prompts me to reload the workspace.

[axonasif]

Hey @ThePaulMcBride, can you please describe more of what you're trying to do?

[ThePaulMcBride]

In this article it says you can add a workspaceLocation line to the gitpod.yaml file so that both repos are opened in the IDE. This works when working in the browser IDE but when working with my local VSCode this doesn't work and only the main repo shows up. I can still right click in the file explorer sidebar and add it manually, so not the end of the world.

[tysonrm]

Can this be nested?

[scasei]

Additional repositories are cloned as shallow copies [1] with git clone --depth=1 [2]
If you need it deeper you can call git fetch --depth 10000 in the repo on init task or something.
I propose to update docs [3] about that fact or to load entire history as default.

[1] https://www.git-scm.com/docs/shallow
[2]

gitpod/components/content-service/pkg/git/git.go

Line 321 in 3939796

args := []string{"--depth=1", "--no-single-branch", c.RemoteURI}

[3] https://www.gitpod.io/docs/multi-repo-workspaces

[sebastianjung]

making vscode workspace files work with this would be great. Otherweise having both folder in the workspace by opening the parent folder would be an option too. For me at least.

[spearki]

@jldec Something we found surprising (which someone has also raised in discord), is that if you add an additionalRespository to a repo but don't have a mainRepository backlink from the additional repo, then prebuilds stop being used if there is a newer commit in that repo than the prebuild.

We would potentially have a lot of additionalRepository repos, and we don't really want all of them to be triggering prebuilds, so we didn't plan on adding a mainRepository link to them. But at the same time, we don't want that to break the use of prebuilds entirely.

[gierschv]

This features work great, we have 5 additional repositories in one of our workspaces.

Similar to @ThePaulMcBride feedback, I was wondering if that would be possible to opt-in for some of them to automatically add them to the VSCode workspace next to the main repository?

Kind of equivalent to this UI feature:

Thanks!

[axonasif]

Hey @gierschv, we're doing it on this gitpod repo itself.

To make this work, you have to create a .code-workspace file and define the folders you would like to be loaded.

gitpod/gitpod-ws.code-workspace

Line 2 in ccb148f

"folders": [

Next, you have to tell gitpod to use that .code-workspace file like so:

gitpod/.gitpod.yml

Line 2 in ccb148f

workspaceLocation: gitpod/gitpod-ws.code-workspace

---

More info on docs:

• https://www.gitpod.io/docs/multi-repo-workspaces
• https://www.gitpod.io/docs/references/gitpod-yml#workspacelocation

[gierschv]

Hey @gierschv, we're doing it on this gitpod repo itself.

To make this work, you have to create a .code-workspace file and define the folders you would like to be loaded.

gitpod/gitpod-ws.code-workspace

Line 2 in ccb148f

"folders": [

Next, you have to tell gitpod to use that .code-workspace file like so:

gitpod/.gitpod.yml

Line 2 in ccb148f

workspaceLocation: gitpod/gitpod-ws.code-workspace

More info on docs:

• https://www.gitpod.io/docs/multi-repo-workspaces
• https://www.gitpod.io/docs/references/gitpod-yml#workspacelocation

Awesome! I didn't know you could put a .code-workspace config here. From the docs it sounds like you can only pass the path of the folder you want to use as workspace root. It works perfectly :)

[david-bakin]

I'd like to point you to this comment - #9209 (comment) - where I suggest considering the use case where you want to use Gitpod to work on repos where you have no access to that repo to add a .gitpod.yml and it will never happen.

What I'd particularly like is environment variable expansion within .gitpod.yml expecially in the additionalRepository: attribute. Then I could have a "main repository" that used a per-user or per-project env var or frequentely an env-var-embedded-in-url to launch my desired repo as an "additional repository" but with all the configuration I want. Even prebuilds. And there would be two ways to use this:

1. Have a project specific repo all prepared with a custom dockerfile and a .gitpod.yml for working with that desired repo and make it public and anyone could immediately use it with their own fork (!!!) merely by using the env var to point to their fork of that repo. (This is what I'm trying to do with https://gitlab.com/bakins-bits/gitpod-setup-for-bitcoin-core-dev/ but without this capability that repo still needs to be cloned by everyone intending to work with Bitcoin Core.)

2. Have a sort of "generic" setup repo that would work with any repo you'd like to work with that went beyond basic dotfile support - you could have a custom container that you always used (perhaps with additional tools), also a custom .gitpod.yml of course - this would apply if you frequently did similar work but in different repos. Even if you could put a .gitpod.yml in those repos you worked in you might, maybe, want to have a single configuration setup rather than copy it into each such repo and maintain it.

[shyim]

I would like to use this feature to clone my repository inside another repository.

For the context: My repository is an extension for another. So I have to install first the other repository and clone my repository inside a specific folder.

For this I would like to install inside an additionalRepository my repository. I did that currently all using init section and moving files, but this breaks with image caching of prebuilds

[axonasif]

Cross posting potential feedback:

• Demo a multi-repo task with 'git switch somebranch' demo-multi-repo-frontend#1

[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.

[sgurlt]

This is currently a nice feature, but it is lacking an integration into prebuilds.
Within my prebuild init steps I want to be able to interact with my additional repositories.
Sadly, I have learned the hard way, that the additional repositories are not existent during the prebuild phase.

Additionally, to that, I want to be able to select additional repositories that trigger a prebuild of my main repository, when a commit is pushed to a given branch of those.

[svenefftinge]

This should work. Can you share the repositories (configurations) you are using it with?

[axonasif]

@sgurlt also created a thread on our discord server, we're discussing there 👋

• https://discord.com/channels/816244985187008514/1159116426448220301