How to define a custom IDE in a devfile

Is there a current documentation for running a custom IDE? I only found an old version: https://www.eclipse.org/che/docs/che-7/end-user-guide/support-for-theia-based-ides/

I created an own devfile like mentioned in the docs with a reference URL. The editor auto insertes a pastebin url, which looks pretty empty: https://pastebin.com/raw/kYprWiNB

So I used the file from the docs an hosted my own file on pastebin. https://pastebin.com/raw/4YdE6DiT When starting the workspace I get the error Workspace emfcloud failed to start. Failed to start the workspace emfcloud, reason: Internal Server Error occurred, error time

Starting in verbose mode gives me the same. The dockerimage of the ide works locally without problems.

Possible reasons I found:

• For me it’s not 100% clear how the specify the image url, when it’s not a quay.io URL. I tried docker.io, registry.hub.docker.com but always get the error above, maybe the issues lays somewhere else?

At the moment I have a docker hub image from: https://hub.docker.com/repository/docker/browork/ide linked as registry.hub.docker.com/browork/ide

If I remove my changes

• type: cheEditor reference: ‘https://pastebin.com/raw/QFYWXJc0’

the workspace starts without a problem. If just use the 2 lines as a devfile I get the error above.

I’m testing this at the moment on Codeready Workspaces, but the issue above should be independent from it.

My devfile file:

metadata:
  name: emfcloud
projects:
  - name: nodejs-web-app
    source:
      location: 'https://codeready-codeready-workspaces-operator.apps.sandbox.x8i5.p1.openshiftapps.com/devfile-registry/resources/nodejs-nodejs-web-app-master.zip'
      type: zip
components:
  - type: cheEditor
    reference: 'https://pastebin.com/raw/QFYWXJc0'
  - id: vscode/typescript-language-features/latest
    type: chePlugin
  - id: ms-vscode/node-debug2/latest
    type: chePlugin
  - mountSources: true
    endpoints:
      - name: nodejs
        port: 3100
    memoryLimit: 512Mi
    type: dockerimage
    alias: nodejs
    image: 'registry.redhat.io/codeready-workspaces/plugin-java8-rhel8@sha256:4845d417584375398127969c06e42ad41cb22db21329eaf3fdf8ee99ed723b2b'
commands:
  - name: 1. Run the web app (and download dependencies)
    actions:
      - workdir: '${CHE_PROJECTS_ROOT}/nodejs-web-app/app'
        type: exec
        command: npm install; nodemon app.js
        component: nodejs
  - name: 2. Download dependencies
    actions:
      - workdir: '${CHE_PROJECTS_ROOT}/nodejs-web-app/app'
        type: exec
        command: npm install
        component: nodejs
  - name: 3. Run the web app
    actions:
      - workdir: '${CHE_PROJECTS_ROOT}/nodejs-web-app/app'
        type: exec
        command: nodemon app.js
        component: nodejs
  - name: 4. Run the web app (debugging enabled)
    actions:
      - workdir: '${CHE_PROJECTS_ROOT}/nodejs-web-app/app'
        type: exec
        command: nodemon --inspect app.js
        component: nodejs
  - name: 5. Stop the web app
    actions:
      - type: exec
        command: 'node_server_pids=$(pgrep -fx ''.*nodemon (--inspect )?app.js'' | tr "\\n" " ") && echo "Stopping node server with PIDs: ${node_server_pids}" && kill -15 ${node_server_pids} &>/dev/null && echo ''Done.'''
        component: nodejs
  - name: Attach remote debugger
    actions:
      - referenceContent: |
          {
            "version": "0.2.0",
            "configurations": [
              {
                "type": "node",
                "request": "attach",
                "name": "Attach to Remote",
                "address": "localhost",
                "port": 9229,
                "localRoot": "${workspaceFolder}",
                "remoteRoot": "${workspaceFolder}"
              }
            ]
          }
        type: vscode-launch

The dockerfile I use

FROM ubuntu:18.04 AS cpp-theia-base
 
ENV DEBIAN_FRONTEND noninteractive
 
RUN apt-get update && \
	apt-get upgrade -y && \
	apt-get install -y default-jdk maven && \
	apt-get install wget build-essential cmake libopenblas-dev gnupg curl make git g++-multilib clangd-10 gdb -y
 
RUN update-alternatives --install /usr/bin/clangd clangd /usr/bin/clangd-10 100
 
RUN curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_10.x | bash - && \
	apt-get install nodejs -y && \
	npm install -g yarn
 
# Make readable for root only
RUN chmod -R 750 /var/run/
 
RUN useradd -ms /bin/bash theia
 
WORKDIR /coffee-editor
 
COPY --chown=theia:theia . .
USER theia
 
ENV test=2
RUN ./run.sh -bcf 
 
WORKDIR /coffee-editor/web/browser-app
 
EXPOSE 3000
 
CMD yarn start --hostname 0.0.0.0

[Deel96]

Okay I found the problem. 512 MB for the container I took from vanilla che-theia was not enough for my custom ide since it also contains language servers. Sadly no errors pointed me this way. Maybe showing that a container is running close to its allowed ressources may be a nice feature. @azatsarynnyy Thank you so much for the help. I learned a lot about che in this issue and while debugging the problem. I have some more questions, but these are out of scope of this ticket.

Best Regards

[azatsarynnyy]

@davidxwwang (1) - yes, it should be enough in most the cases (2) - you should expose the port your Theia editor is listening to. For Che-Theia, it’s set here (3) - there are a couple of options: che-editor URL parameter or .che/che-editor.yaml file in the repo. See more details in the docs here (4) - when you start a Che Workspace, Che looks for a custom editor definition defined in the places mentioned in (3). Then, the custom editor Devfile becomes a part of the entire DevWorkspace custom resource definition used by the DevWorkspace Operator to deploy all the needed resources to a cluster. The endpoint with type: main is used for opening an IDE.