devpod VS nvm

We recommend using the Dev Container configuration with Visual Studio Code (VS Code) or DevPod to ensure a consistent development experience across different computers and environments. It may sound complicated, but it is as easy as a breeze!

When you push your code to Github, you can develop the app using codespace and it will automatically set up an online development environment for you. Other tools will make your life easier when developing using a dev container e.g. DevPod.

DevPod is that new kid in town that works on the same standard of devcontainers.json that Codespaces uses but is on the infrastructure of your choice and is open source. The project was just launched this May and has gathered more than 5.3K stars in this period. The advantage is the lower costs (around 5-10 times cheaper than cloud VMs) with auto-shutdown.

For students, unless there are allocated server resources with network access, it SHOULD/MUST scale down to one local offline ARM64 node (because school districts haven't afforded containers on a managed k8s cloud for students at scale fwiu, though universities do with e.g. JupyterHub and BinderHub [4] and Colab).

For Chromebook sysadmins, Instructors, and Students learning about how {Linux*, ChromiumOS, Android, Git, Bash, ZSH, Python, and e.g. PyData Tools supported by NumFOCUS} are developed, for example;

When you git commit to a git branch, and then `git push` that branch to GitHub, and create a Pull Request, GitHub Actions runs the (container,command) tasks defined in the YAML files in the .github/workflows/ directory of the repo; so `git push` to a PR branch runs the CI job and the results are written back as cards in the Pull Request thread on the GitHub Project; saving to the server runs the (container,command) Actions with that revision of the git repo.

Somewhat-equivalent GitOps CI Continuous Integration workflows (without Bazel or Blaze or gtest or gn, or GitHub Enterprise or GitHub Free due to the kids' intererests) that might be supported at least in analogue by Education and Chromebooks: k8s with podman-desktop in a VM, Gitea Actions (nektos/act; like Github Actions), devpod

devpod: https://github.com/loft-sh/devpod :

> Codespaces but open-source, client-only and unopinionated: Works with any IDE and lets you use any cloud, kubernetes or just localhost docker. (with devcontainer.json, like Github Codespaces)

devcontainer.json is supported by a number of tools; e.g. VScode, IntelliJ,: https://containers.dev/supporting

repo2docker has buildpacks (like Heroku and Google AppEngine).

repo2docker buildpacks should probably work with devcontainer.json too?

repo2docker docs > Usage > "REES: Reproducible Execution Environment" describes what all repo2docker will build a container from: https://repo2docker.readthedocs.io/en/latest/usage.html

jupyterhub/repo2docker builds a Dockerfile (Containerfile) from git repo (or a Figshare/Zenodo DOI) that minimally has at least an /environment.yml and /example.py (and probably also at least a /README.md to start with), and installs a current, updated version of jupyter notebook along with whatever's in e.g. /environment.yml per the REES spec. [1][2][3]

[1] repo2docker/buildpacks/base.py: https://github.com/jupyterhub/repo2docker/blob/main/repo2doc...

[2] "Make base_image configurable" https://github.com/jupyterhub/repo2docker/commit/20b08152578...

[3] repo2docker/buildpacks/conda/environment.py-3.11.yml:

Also see https://devpod.sh/ which has had quite a lot of exposure on HN recently.

For these reasons, I believe most developer environments should prioritize developer experience over fidelity. Tools like Containerized development environments and cloud emulators can strike the right balance and there’s no surprise that we see increased activity around devcontainers, and similar solutions.

Have you considered devcontainers?

Its use results in carrying entire development environments with you, while not cluttering your host OS.

Using DevPod (https://devpod.sh/) ypu are not locked into Visual Studio or Visual Studio Code, but you can use whatever tool you want.

IMO this kind of setup will provide a much better DX than running a bunch of VMs eating away the resources of your laptop.

nvm - Node version manager

Node.js + Nvm - runtime for javascript without a browser

Install Node.js if it hasn't been installed. There are several ways to install Node.js. You may download the installer from the official website, or install it with tools like NVM. After installation, run this command to verify its installation.

Our server also needs Node.js to run our app. We could install the binary directly, but I prefer to use a tool called NVM, which allows us to easily manage Node versions. We can install it with this command:

By setting up your environment in isolation, you can prevent yourself from a lot of issues when experimenting with code. It makes your code behave more predictable due to the defined state of the runtime environment you are working with. This article should provide you with enough information to get started, but obviously, there is a lot more power embedded in NVM, Virtual Environment and RBEnv. So make sure to check their documentation.

I highly recommend setting up nodejs with a version manager, nvm was and still is a popular option, however, I now recommend and have been using fnm, a simpler and faster alternative to manage my nodejs versions.

The purpose of a version manager is to help you navigate or install any tools for development easily. Version Manager can be one tool for each dependency (e.g. NVM, g) or One tool for all dependencies (e.g. asdf, mise).

I usually develop on Windows so I installed NVM for Windows from here, but if you’re on other OS I’m sure you can find a version that supports it, probably this is the answer.

This was a very quick introduction to how I setup NodeJS on my environment using nvm. If you have any questions please refer to the official documentation or contact me via my Social Links.