[supervisor] workspace start fails if git is not available

[kylos101]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe

Supervisor fails on workspace start if git is not available in the underlying workspace's image. The error message we shared with users was improved in #15574, but, failing workspace start because git is missing is a poor user experience. Additionally, these failures partly decrease Workspace Team SLOs [1].

Describe the behaviour you'd like

There are many ways to install git.

Since supervisor is failing on workspace start, perhaps instead it can inject the right version of git? I'm not sure why supervisor is failing, but assume it is because eventually we need git. For example, either to bootstrap the workspace, or after it's ready, so that the user can do VCS operations

Describe alternatives you've considered

• A new component is created, and is responsible for injecting git,

Additional context

Internal Slack conversation

[iQQBot]

it's weird, I remember we don't rely on git in supervisor, and content init running in ws-daemon I don't know why we need to add this check #15574

maybe it related to PVC backup (it start pre stop hook running in workspace), not sure about this.

[kylos101]

👋 @laushinka @loujaybee @akosyakov may we ask you to consider this for prioritization? From a usability standpoint, it would be nice to have git added by supervisor, if the custom image does not include it. 🙏 This is similar to how we expect docker to be available from a usability standpoint.

[akosyakov]

@iQQBot We do unshallow, and having git in Gitpod workspace is kind of a requirement.

[loujaybee]

This relates to some issues that have come up with our investigations. This is somewhat mitigated with the use of gp rebuild, which catches this issue earlier. But yes, users who get to this point should see a better error + UX.

• https://github.com/gitpod-io/website/issues/2188

It's similar to these:

• Stuck in a loop with incorrect workspace image #16264
• Improve error message for invalid .gitpod.yml configurations ("continue with default" options) #16236

I've tagged up with feature: outer loop, which is an area we'll look into in future 🙏

[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.