GitHubs Magic Dot

GitHub has released the long awaited solution für code editing in the web today, or more precisely, the two new solutions: CodeSpaces and github.dev.

As Brigit Murtaugh and Allison Weins pointed out in their presentation at the live stream on Youtube (VS Code anywhere: GitHub Codespaces and github.dev), both solutions are based on the codebase of Visual Studio Code, but have different approaches and target groups.

Where Codespaces is an online editor with computing capabilities (realized by running a VM in the backend) and is only available für paid plans, github.dev is a free online editor to change files in your GitHub repo as you do it in your local VSCode, but without running and debugging capabilities.

Features like extensions, code completion, references, creating pull requests and other things we need all day in our VSCode, works also in these web editors, including settings sync!

github.dev

The non-computing web editor is fully integrated in GitHub itself. There is no URL github.dev, where you can load your repo. Instead, if the URL to your repo is f.e. https://github.com/myname/myrepo, just replace .com with .dev and your code is available in the editor! For people who like it even more comfortable: go to your repo and just press the DOT key. Really smart.

This even works on mobile, which will definitely change my workflow…