Feedback Issue: Multi-repo workspace configuration

[jldec]

Objective

The aim of this issue is to gather feedback on the Beta feature: Multi-repo workspace configuration.
Please add your feedback in comments below -- any feedback is welcome!

More information

• Docs
• RFC
• Roadmap Issue
• Pull Request

[mikenikles]

I wanted to use this feature to open all template-* repositories in a single workspace so we can apply changes across all repos with minimal effort. See PR gitpod-io/template-all#2.

I encountered various issues:

• API rate limit exceeded #8952
• The GitHub Pull Requests & Issues extension repeatedly asks me to grant permissions
• The browser crashes after a few minutes

What was the maximum number of repositories multi-repo workspaces were tested with? I'd like to add a disclaimer to the docs to warn people not to exceed that number.

[axonasif]

It would be nice to have a property for the sub-repo dir to be opened with a new VSCODE instance with the new dir as its root. Same thing as running code dir command.

An example use case(there are more): https://discord.com/channels/816244985187008514/960820692876681256/960836288171360256

[ibrah3m]

I recommend providing an option to make us able to pass/get the main configuration from
environment-variables like the example below
mainConfiguration: $MY_VAR // should already exist or be passed by the URL

[axonasif]

You can pass env vars via URL: https://www.gitpod.io/docs/environment-variables#provide-env-vars-via-url
However, I guess this parameter does not support env vars now.

[ThePaulMcBride]

When working on local VSCode the workspaceLocation option doesn't seem to do anything. I have to navigate to the file described and then it prompts me to reload the workspace.

[axonasif]

Hey @ThePaulMcBride, can you please describe more of what you're trying to do?

[ThePaulMcBride]

In this article it says you can add a workspaceLocation line to the gitpod.yaml file so that both repos are opened in the IDE. This works when working in the browser IDE but when working with my local VSCode this doesn't work and only the main repo shows up. I can still right click in the file explorer sidebar and add it manually, so not the end of the world.

[tysonrm]

Can this be nested?

[scasei]

Additional repositories are cloned as shallow copies [1] with git clone --depth=1 [2]
If you need it deeper you can call git fetch --depth 10000 in the repo on init task or something.
I propose to update docs [3] about that fact or to load entire history as default.

[1] https://www.git-scm.com/docs/shallow
[2]

gitpod/components/content-service/pkg/git/git.go

Line 321 in 3939796

args := []string{"--depth=1", "--no-single-branch", c.RemoteURI}

[3] https://www.gitpod.io/docs/multi-repo-workspaces

[sebastianjung]

making vscode workspace files work with this would be great. Otherweise having both folder in the workspace by opening the parent folder would be an option too. For me at least.

[spearki]

@jldec Something we found surprising (which someone has also raised in discord), is that if you add an additionalRespository to a repo but don't have a mainRepository backlink from the additional repo, then prebuilds stop being used if there is a newer commit in that repo than the prebuild.

We would potentially have a lot of additionalRepository repos, and we don't really want all of them to be triggering prebuilds, so we didn't plan on adding a mainRepository link to them. But at the same time, we don't want that to break the use of prebuilds entirely.