Chapter 2. Notable enhancements

An OpenShift CRD and Controller is handling workspace containers, rather than CodeReady Workspaces server. This transfer of responsibility enables a better orchestration. To manage the workspaces, OpenShift native tools and APIs are available, rather than a CodeReady Workspaces-server REST API using services of a custom CRD.

It enables:

The Image Puller can pre-download any CodeReady Workspaces image on all the nodes of an OpenShift cluster. The operator-metadata image doesn’t need pre-pulling and is not supported.

The Devfile allows for the definition of development environments in a repeatable and shareable manner. The specification continues to evolve as more tools, such as odo, adopt Devfiles and expand their usage. We are progressively introducing support in CodeReady Workspaces for the Devfile v2.x to allow for the following:

The VS Code YAML plug-in has been updated to version 0.14.0.

The VS Code Asciidoctor plug-in has been deprecated and will be removed in the future release.

Memory limits are handled at the plug-in and devfile levels. The globalMemory limits have been removed from the meta.yaml files inside the devfile registry.

The che-machine-exec and remote-runtime-injector plug-ins have defined resource limits.

The VS Code Language support for Camel K has been updated to version 0.0.24.

Users can pull images from private registries.

Some VS Code extensions must run in Multi-root mode. CodeReady Workspaces sets the Multi-root mode for all new workspaces.

To turn on the Multi-root mode in workspaces created in an earlier version, set the multiRoot parameter in the devfile:

attributes:
  multiRoot: 'on'

All namespace strategies except the per-user strategy are deprecated and will be unsupported with a future release.

This change:

To access and authenticate a private GitLab repository using a factory URL pointer:

CodeReady Workspaces optionally collects Red Hat telemetry data from extensions that support it.

Upon starting a workspace whose devfile uses Git with SSH to clone a sample project, CodeReady Workspaces prompts you to provide an SSH key.

CodeReady Workspaces supports workspace creation using a GitLab-based factory URL.

The Bierner Markdown plug-in enables users to render Mermaid diagrams and flowchart graphs directly using Che-Theia Markdown preview.

The dashboard is running in a dedicated container rather than in the CodeReady Workspaces server container.