Dotfiles debugging support for inner loop (gp rebuild)

[axonasif]

Is your feature request related to a problem? Please describe

Iterating and debugging dotfiles for Gitpod would be equally useful as with .gitpod.yml.

Describe the behaviour you'd like

💭 As an user I imagine it to be:

• If ~/.dotfiles dir exists on the parent workspace, share a clone of it in the debug workspace.
• If the user opens their dotfiles repo as a workspace, share that as ~/.dotfiles in the debug workspace instead of sharing from the parent workspace $HOME/.dotfiles.
• Have a --dotfiles-dir flag to specify a custom dir of dotfiles. (nice to have)
• From where dotfiles dir is being shared could be informed to the user through terminal logs.
• If the user updates the dotfiles link on https://gitpod.io/preferences, inform and maybe switch to it?

Describe alternatives you've considered

Additional context

Some more context here 🙏

• https://gitpod.slack.com/archives/C03NWNHJ163/p1676048235177169?thread_ts=1675954838.949759&cid=C03NWNHJ163

[axonasif]

Some related feedback:

• Show error logs on the loading screen if dotfiles installation script exits with a non-zero code #13004 (comment)

[akosyakov]

Debug workspace should share what is actually shared between workplace restarts, ie /workspace. Nothing else should be by design. Instead as any other workpace it should go via initialization of dotifles on each start. If it does not happen then it is a bug. Adding —dotfiles option makes sense to iterate on dotfiles repo itself.

[axonasif]

Debug workspace should share what is actually shared between workplace restarts, ie /workspace.

dotfiles may not be directly saved between restarts but it's applied/installed between restarts and can influence the startup of a workspace. Having the capability to only test dotfiles would be useful too as you mentioned. However, sometimes the /workspace repo context is needed for debugging some specific automation.

[akosyakov]

It is the point. It should work as for normal workpace, ie applied/installed each time exactly the same way. Not in any new way.

To be clear I’m not opposed of a flag to pick up from local dif, so you can checkout yourself your dotfile repo in any workspace and point to it. But otherwise it should behave exactly like for the outer. The only difference to normal run should be shared /workspace mount by default. If something else is different we should fix it.

[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.