Codespaces provider is not available on the latest JetBrains Gateway 2023.3

[Wallvon]

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Bug

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Ref: https://youtrack.jetbrains.com/issue/GTW-7081/JetBrains-Gateway-doesnt-show-the-GitHub-Codespaces-provider
A support person Gyulnara Nevezhina said "GitHub didn't update their integration plugin to the 2023.3 compatible version. Unfortunately, we can't provide any ETA because it's an external provider. I guess it may be useful if you contact them as well.", so I report it here as well.

From github/codespaces-jetbrains-feedback#129 seeing as that repository isn't maintained anymore as per its README.

[moznion]

Are there any updates? Currently, all Codespaces plugins for JetBrains products are unavailable, which is really inconvenient and disappointing. If GitHub does not plan to maintain these plugins anymore, it would be fair to announce this to the users, suggesting that they consider changing their environment.

[wathika-eng]

Can't imagine going back to VsCode🥹

[apylypchuk-nr]

@wathika-eng downgrade Gateway to 2023.2.4

[Lomna21]

good work. Well done!!

[fuzemobi]

@wathika-eng downgrade Gateway to 2023.2.4

This works perfectly. Thanks for the heads up.

[vincentclaes]

how do you downgrade? I cannot find a page with previous versions?

[danirzv]

Any updates?

[xtazy]

I moved to Gitpod because of this issue, don't think I'll come back to Codespaces

[mjStallinger]

I think this plugin can be considered dead. Right?

[moznion]

If the GitHub team no longer wishes to maintain this plugin, why not make its code public? I believe that GitHub, as a company that empowers open-source software, would find the idea of making this plugin open-source quite fitting.

[steve-todorov]

You might be interested in my last reply to the thread which shows a workaround to the problem. :)

https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/78982?sort=top#discussioncomment-8442455

[matthew-chudleigh-entain]

GitHub Codespaces still shows the option to open into the JetBrains Gateway - someone has really dropped the ball on this.

[avdi]

I'm also affected, eager for updates!

[navi504]

Im also afected

[benstpierre]

I am also affected and eager for updates!!!!!

[oliveryasuna]

This would be a great feature!

[rkosmirak]

Just wondering, do we have anybody from the team who can assist in this? Or we are just waiting for more votes for this question to be seen?

[dallinwright-optioncrit]

I really dislike how GitHub as it's owned by Microsoft forces people onto VSCode by doing stuff like this, this isn't the first time nor the only instance.

[prplecake]

We're now in the "Extinguish" phase.

[jetxr]

Top voted discussion of all time in Codespaces category and still no communication about the status of the plugin for more than a month lol

[steve-todorov]

Are there any updates on this? If this is not a priority for Microsoft, then maybe the plugin can be open-sourced so the community can step up and help with fixing the problem(s) and make it work again. This has been broken for 3 months now! If there was a way to gain access to the VM/container that hosts the codespace then you could connect with JetBrain's Gateway via the SSH plugin.

[pawlean]

Hi, everyone! Pauline from Gitpod here. 👋🏼 In case you didn't know, Gitpod is already integrated and updated with the latest JetBrains Gateway May be something you'd like to play with as you wait! 🥳

[dallinwright-optioncrit]

JetBrains gateway (Currently in Beta) has limited support for remote IDE's, the most popular for sure but RustRover (my IDE) is not yet supported in Gateway, thus not supported for remote development in any platform either cloud or self-hosted in case others go down the rabbit hole I did from hours of research.

[pawlean]

@dallinwright-optioncrit Thanks for sharing! I will share this internally as feedback. Although it sounds like this is more of a JetBrains "issue", right? Worth passing that to them too, if you can.

[sayhiben]

Hey Pauline - Personal opinion here:

While I appreciate that there are working alternatives to Codespaces, we really need GitHub to address this rather than pushing orgs to new remote dev. providers

I also find it a bit tasteless to attempt to capitalize on this tech support thread to shill competing products; at worst, the next step for this thread's participants is to help define how to leverage SSH tunnels in Gateway to restore the Codespaces connection rather than opting for a new provider

[steve-todorov]

I feel like GitHub should do a better job at fixing their plugin in time. People can't use their services and some of them are actually paying customers which is unacceptable.

We've spend a while looking into workarounds that can help us use CodeSpaces.
Here is what seems to be working for us so far:

1. Add your SSH key to Github (i.e. ~/.ssh/id_ed25519)

2. Download and install gh cli

3. gh auth login to Authenticate

4. Start a CodeSpace

5. Run gh codespace ssh --config (might need to re-authenticate to elevate permission levels, but that will be automatic so just follow the seps)

6. The above command will give you an output similar to this (you can get the id via gh codespace list):

   Host cs.<id-of-codespace>.master
     User vscode
     ProxyCommand /home/<username>/.local/bin/gh cs ssh -c <id-of-codespace> --stdio -- -i /home/<username>/.ssh/codespaces.auto
     UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null
     StrictHostKeyChecking no
     LogLevel quiet
     ControlMaster auto
     IdentityFile /home/<username>/.ssh/codespaces.auto
   

7. The above only works for gh codespace ssh. It will NOT work if you simply try to execute ssh vscode@<id-of-codespace>.github.dev it will give you errors.

8. Replace the above output with this one and add it to your ~/.ssh/config. The important parts are the Host, ProxyCommand and IdentityFile. The rest should remain whatever the gh cli gave you (at least we didn't change anything)

   Host <id-of-codespace>.github.dev
     User vscode
     ProxyCommand /home/<username>/.local/bin/gh cs ssh -c <id-of-codespace> --stdio -- -i /home/<username>/.ssh/id_ed25519 <= OR WHEREVER YOUR ACTUAL KEY KEY IS
     UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null
     StrictHostKeyChecking no
     LogLevel quiet
     ControlMaster auto
     IdentityFile /home/<username>/.ssh/id_ed25519 <= OR WHEREVER YOUR ACTUAL KEY KEY IS
   

   You can also use the following command to do the same thing (bash / sh / zsh / etc):

   IDENTITY_FILE=~/.ssh/id_ed25519; 
   gh codespace ssh --config | sed -E "s#(ProxyCommand.*) -i((.+)codespaces.auto)#\1 -i $IDENTITY_FILE#g; s#(IdentityFile).+codespaces.auto#\1 $IDENTITY_FILE#g; s/cs\.(.+)\.(.+)-github-codespace/\1.github.dev/"

9. Test the connection with ssh -vv vscode|codespace@<id-of-codespace>.github.dev

10. Start JetBrains Gateway and select SSH connection instead of Github Codespaces
    

11. Everything should be working.

[steve-todorov]

Does your ssh key have a password? Also check the logs and see which keys are being offered. You might have misconfigured the ~/.ssh/config file.

[man-chi]

my ssh have not password defined. the following is my ~/.ssh/config. I have regenerated a new pair of ed25519 key without password and even set chmod 600 for ~/.ssh/* all files, but it still prompted me for password, it is strange.

Host animated-space-goggles-67g94gq96r5crprr.github.dev
  User vscode
  ProxyCommand /usr/local/bin/gh cs ssh -c animated-space-goggles-67g94gq96r5crprr --stdio -- -i ~/.ssh/id_ed25519
  UserKnownHostsFile=/dev/null
  StrictHostKeyChecking no
  LogLevel quiet
  ControlMaster auto
  IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_ed25519

[steve-todorov]

Looks correct to me. Did you add the key into your github profile? Also sharing the log might provide info. I feel like you might be having multiple keys offered to the SSH server.

[Woolyenough]

For me, the username was codespace - might be the same or something different for you

[steve-todorov]

@Woolyenough thanks for pointing that out. During out tests we did not see codespace as the username, but I've updated the steps to mention it's a possibility.

[2010person]

Downgrading to another version of JeBrains Gateway dosen't seem to work, as there are too many bugs, particularly ones that give the error message that GitHub CLI couldn't be found, despite it being installed.

[2010person]

It does seem like it is now going to be almost impossible to connect GitHub Codespaces with JetBrains gateway

[steve-todorov]

Downgrading didn't work for us as well. The other problem if you manage to get it to work with the downgraded gateway version is that if you use JDK > 17 it won't work as well, because IntelliJ won't be able to work with JDK 21. The best we could do is use the SSH workaround I posted above.

[2010person]

Ok, thanks, I will explore that option.

[robertdewilde-dev]

@cwndrws / @shayneburgess could you please answer or escalate this?

[github-staff]

We are aware of Codespaces not supporting the latest JetBrains Gateway and IDE versions. GitHub public roadmap is the best place to follow along for any updates on features we’re working on and what stage they’re in. We will post updates on the roadmap when we have more information regarding our timeline to resolution.

[fclante]

This is not good enough! We have an Enterprise subscription and this is a prized feature that should be on top of the roadmap. It seems like once you're a subscriber Github loses the interest in you. CodeSpaces is great, but without broad IDE support it's a hard sell in the org.

[2010person]

If you are a GitHub Enterprise customer, you could raise it with the official customer support, I think.

[samwightt]

There's nothing on the roadmap for anything Codespaces-related despite releases from the Codespaces team in February. Can the roadmap be updated with what the Codespaces team is working on currently?

[alessandro-newzoo]

@github-staff
Considering that this is a feature GitHub claim to be available in Codespaces, I find it utterly ridiculous that it's not even in your roadmap for this year.

I understand you're afraid of the competition, but this is no way to handle it and should not be at the expense of your paying clients who subscribed because of your false promises.
If you're not willing to support JetBrains Gateway that's fine, but then please stop promoting Codespaces as a tool that supports it:
https://docs.github.com/en/codespaces/developing-in-a-codespace/using-github-codespaces-in-your-jetbrains-ide

and remove these misleading buttons that take the user nowhere:

and make a goddamn public announcement stating that you don't give a crap about fixing this.

People are paying for something you advertise, which in reality doesn't work and there are no plans on fixing it. This is called false advertising and should be illegal.

[SilverBut]

It sucks and since Jetbrains now have their own AI & codespace infra, I might reconsider my subscription after a try with them.

[MikeLundahl]

The docs need a serious update. If there are no plans on updating the JetBrains provider plugin (looking at the roadmap referenced by staff), then please either remove the official support for it in the documents or update it with a solution that works.

[2010person]

Yeah I will put an issue on the docs repo

[fuzemobi]

@github-staff - Will there be a workaround or should we all move to JetBrains Spaces or Gitpod?

[hfhbd]

Space contains many features, if you only want self hosted dev containers you can try the new SpacePort solution: https://lp.jetbrains.com/spaceport/

[mikaellohar]

Come on get this fixed please.

[benstpierre]

Clearly nobody cares about their customers or this.

[tuanalumi]

There is a new version of the plugin. Has anyone tried it out?

[cempack]

From what I observed, it works, but only on Gateway, not directly into your IDE, which is strange.

[eveenendaal]

I needed to install the codespaces plugin and restart the IDE for it to show up.

[cempack]

Well, after restarting the IDEs multiple times, now it works for IntelliJ, WebStorm, GoLand, and Gateway, but it does not seem to work with RustRover (does not find the extension, I guess because of RR is still in Preview), sad :/

[tuanalumi]

Not working on WebStorm for me :(

[cempack]

Try reinstalling the plugin and restarting your ide, it worked for me that way.