Development Workspace¶

An advantage presented by orchestration platforms is that you can utilise the Kubernetes cluster's resources for your development and engineering works instead of your own resources.

We can make use of Coder to spin up VSCode servers with which cluster resources can be dedicated.

Coder & VSCode Server¶

Prebuilt VSCode Server in Coder¶

The MLOps team should have spun up a Coder instance in the cluster and handed the URL to you. The only thing you would need to do is to log into Coder with OpenID Connect:

Once you're in, you should be seeing something similar to this:

If you do not see a workspace running, or you could not access the Coder workspace allocated to you, you can contact the MLOps team.

If you have the permissions, you could also create a workspace on your own. The template you have access to will only work for one workspace at a time, so you could switch out workspaces with different CPU and RAM resources, depending on the needs of your team's project requirements.

Recommended settings for your first time are as follows:

• Workspace Name: <YOUR_HYPHENATED_NAME>-vscode
• CPU: 2 Cores
• Memory: 4GB

If all of it runs normally, you should have two buttons: VS Code Desktop and code-server. Click on the latter to start running the remote VSCode Workspace.

You should be directed to the VSCode server welcome tab without password prompt.

Persistent Workspaces¶

As mentioned, a PVC should be attached to the workspaces to persist changes to the filesystems. You can use the following command to search for the PVC:

ls -la / | grep "pvc"

If there's no result, check with the MLOps team about this.

By default, the PVCs would contain a workspaces directory with which you can create a subdirectory for yourself treat it as your own personal workspace, where all your work and other relevant assets can be persisted.

cd /<PVC_LOCATION>/workspaces
mkdir <YOUR_HYPHENATED_NAME>

Git from VSCode¶

Git by default is installed in the VSCode server image. One thing to take note is that as the persistent storage would be accessible by the rest of your project team members, you should only use the HTTPS protocol to clone the repository as opposed to creating and using an SSH key within the VSCode server.

Now, let's clone your repository from the remote:

cd /<PVC_LOCATION>/workspaces/<YOUR_HYPHENATED_NAME>
git clone <REMOTE_URL_HTTPS>
cd ghpages

Extensions for VSCode¶

You can install a multitude of extensions for your VSCode service but there are a couple that would be crucial for your workflow, especially if you intend to use Jupyter notebooks within the VSCode environment.

• ms-python.python: Official extension by Microsoft for rich support for many things Python.
• ms-toolsai.jupyter: Official extension by Microsoft for Jupyter support.

$ code-server --install-extension /path/to/extension.vsix