GitHub Codespaces

Interact with your GitHub Codespaces directly from Backstage platform.

Plugin details
Created by	Aditya Singhal
Category	Development
Source	GitHub
Type	Open-source plugin

Limitations

• Any Codespace started using EntityGithubCodespacesWidget or EntityGithubCodespacesCard action will create a new codespace with the exact same display name as the entity name.

• Once the Codespace is created, you can only start the Codespace from the Widget/Card action.

• The plugin does not support GitHub Enterprise yet.

Configuration

Application configuration YAML

No action required

This plugin does not require you to add application configuration.

Secrets

This plugin requires the user to log in using the configured GitHub OAuth application. Make sure that you have a GitHub OAuth application created and configured in IDP. For instructions to configure a GitHub OAuth app, go to OAuth support for plugins.

Delegate proxy

No action required

This plugin does not require a delegate proxy to be set up because GitHub is publicly accessible.

Layout

This plugin exports a page and two cards on the overview page, one to start a Codespace and another with a list of already active Codespace. Go to Configure → Layout, select Service in the dropdown menu, and then you could find the following YAML code auto-ingested:

...
    - name: Overview
      path: /
      title: Overview
      contents:
        - component: EntityGithubCodespacesCard
          specs:
            gridProps:
              md: 6
        - component: EntityGithubCodespacesWidget
          specs:
            gridProps:
              md: 6
...
    - name: EntityGithubCodespacesContent
      path: /github-codespaces-entity
      title: CodespacesEntityContent
      contents:
        - component: EntitySwitch
          specs:
            cases:
              - if: isGithubCodespacesAvailable
                content:
                  component: EntityGithubCodespacesContent
    - name: EntityGithubCodespacesRepoContent
      path: /github-codespaces-repo
      title: CodespacesRepoContent
      contents:
        - component: EntitySwitch
          specs:
            cases:
              - if: isGithubCodespacesAvailable
                content:
                  component: EntityGithubCodespacesRepoContent
...

The isGithubCodespacesAvailable condition is met when the github.com/project-slug annotation is present in the software component's catalog-info.yaml definition file.

Annotations

If the catalog-info.yaml descriptor file for the component is stored in GitHub, the github.com/project-slug is automatically added as the org/repo where the file is stored, as follows. You can as well add annotation for a custom devcontainer configuration with relative path of devcontainer.json file from root of the repository. However, you can manually configure or override this setting:

metadata:
  annotations:
    github.com/project-slug: org/repo
     github.com/devcontainer-path: .devcontainer/devcontainer.json

Support

The plugin is owned by an individual Aditya Singhal and managed in this Repository as an open-source project. Create a GitHub issue to report bugs or suggest new features for the plugin.