[HN Gopher] How to code, build, and deploy from an iPad using Gi...
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How to code, build, and deploy from an iPad using Gitlab and Gitpod
Author : tosh
Score : 81 points
Date : 2022-04-17 12:23 UTC (1 days ago)
(HTM) web link (about.gitlab.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (about.gitlab.com)
| nchase wrote:
| I tried pretty hard to make my iPad Pro a development machine by
| installing a great ssh/mosh client, then setting up an EC2
| instance in the cloud with my favorite terminal tools.
|
| It was always "almost good enough" but the effort required
| outweighed the benefits. Any time I needed a new tool, I had to
| try to figure out if the tool was going to be resource-hungry
| enough to bring down my EC2 instance. This stopped the whole show
| multiple times.
| cyberpunk wrote:
| I have mine connected to a AMD Ryzen 9 5900X with 128GB of ram
| and NVME disks in a 'real' datacenter because overkill is
| probably the smart move when it comes to work machines...
|
| Copy/Paste is my main problem working in blink. I mean, I use
| tmux, but it's a real pain copy/paste from
| blink->slack/teams/jira/whatever.
| tosh wrote:
| https://github.com/blinksh/blink/issues/578
|
| > Paste from iPad to blink works out of the box, but in
| opposite it depends. If we copy wrapped lines, usually they
| breaks. I don't mind apps with menus and interfaces (i.e. mc,
| tmux with window splits, editors, etc.)
|
| > As for now, the perfect solution is to use OSC52 escape
| codes, these works well with ssh and recent mosh.
|
| > In order to get clipboard setup working, we need recent
| software: tmux 3+, mosh 1.3+, vim 8+ or neovim 4.3+
|
| https://github.com/andrius/blink-dotfiles
| ghuntley wrote:
| I do similar https://Ghuntley.com/anywhere.
|
| Blink (Mosh) + Tailscale + RDP for edge cases where Gitpod
| doesn't fit (ie topics of GUI or needs to run batch compute
| processing)
| yonixw wrote:
| Gitpod is VSCode front running on the browser and the backend is
| in a Linux container on their cloud. They have a running script
| you can commit which lets you run any command while starting up
| or even specify your own docker (which inherit from theirs). This
| allows you to create dev environment for most common languages.
| This article also shows how to use Gitlab CI/CD on every push.
|
| Pros: No need for high end laptop/pc (Shared on 16cores). Free
| HTTPS exposing for every port on the machine. Docker included.
| Standardize you dev environment (including VSCode extensions).
| Amazing if you are handling multiple projects and context switch
| between them a a lot (K8s, Dockers, nodejs, React and more) or
| for education with no hassles.
|
| Cons: Not all VSCode extensions are supported, as some are
| proprietary. Only support Gitlab, Github, Bitbucket. Free tier
| limited with 50 hours/month
|
| Personally, I love the product. Helps me spin up dev env in
| seconds.
| ghuntley wrote:
| Geoff here from Gitpod. Solid write up and overview here. Some
| minor clarifications and helpful pointers!
|
| There's a community WIP pull request open right now to add
| Gitea support.
|
| The visual studio marketplace is proprietary (by design) and as
| such we created OpenVSX for the open source ecosystem then
| gifted it to the eclipse foundation. If you see something not
| in OpenVSX send the pull request here https://github.com/open-
| vsx/publish-extensions
|
| And, finally, Open source communities are eligible for
| complimentary plan upgrades to unlimited hours.
| https://www.gitpod.io/blog/gitpod-for-opensource
| pid-1 wrote:
| I started using their product last year, but ended up coming
| back to VS Code + .devcontainers.
|
| I've found their configuration scheme (.gitpod.yml) confusing
| and lacking documentation. I couldn't get trivial stuff like
| Prebuilds to work correctly.
| ghuntley wrote:
| Would love to learn more and connect you with one of our
| product managers that looks after configuration and pre
| builds. Email me at geoff@gitpod.io? Thanks.
| huydotnet wrote:
| I'm currently using my iPad as a VNC client for a headless Mac
| mini, it's pretty close to a laptop. But need to figure out how
| to get a better wifi connection from my home office to my bed
| room btw.
| thih9 wrote:
| Sounds really cool. What are your favorite benefits of this
| setup over a regular laptop? Anything to watch out for?
| ghuntley wrote:
| See https://Ghuntley.com/internet for ideas.
| ghuntley wrote:
| Geoff here from Gitpod. I've been using an iPad to build Gitpod
| with Gitpod for a while now. Dumped my brains and recommendations
| over at https://Ghuntley.com/anywhere if you are curious.
| epolanski wrote:
| GitPod uses vscode, and vscode uses monaco. Monaco is very mobile
| unfriendly.
| mhh__ wrote:
| It's a strange situation where, in order to code on an M1 iPad,
| you might end up phoning into a box either you own or in the
| cloud, and that box is likely _much_ slower than the M1 is on a
| single-thread.
| thrwawy283 wrote:
| I just want to run a VM on an iPad. I don't consider the iPad or
| Apple to be the best device to protect my privacy, but it is the
| most comfortable tablet/portable experience. What I read last,
| was that Google is adding it's "Tensor" processors to its Nexus
| phones, and Android 13 will allow running full VMs as "apps"
| within Android. That's what we want to happen on the Apple side.
|
| I don't like Android or iOS fully. I want the freedom of a full
| Linux distro. I think we're going to transition to that over many
| years. The next step is Linux (Android) running Linux in a VM.
| Once Apple sees that expect a competing technology on the iPad.
| Then we'll have real tablet development machines. It will take
| years more for Linux desktop environments to gain a tablet
| experience as comfortable as iOS. :\
| pjmlp wrote:
| Ironically iPadOS has much better offerings for on device
| development than any Android tablet, with exception of
| Samsung's Dex.
| goosedragons wrote:
| Dex is just a fancy window manager. With Termux and an Alpine
| or Ubuntu proot there's very little even a Kindle Fire can't
| do on the device. It's even possible to run X11 and a desktop
| environment like XFCE4.
| pjmlp wrote:
| Not on modern Android, given the lockdown on NDK APIs,
| while Termux folks refuse to embrace JNI instead of private
| Linux syscalls (as per Google's point of view).
| simonw wrote:
| Gitpod is fantastic. I used it when I was running an online
| workshop a while ago - I gave the workshop attendees instructions
| on how to use it to get a reliable Python development
| environment, skipping the horror that is getting 20+ people to a
| place where they have a working environment on their own
| computer.
| mark_l_watson wrote:
| How is Gitpod for other languages, e.g., SBCL Common Lisp,
| Haskell, etc.? Isaw mention of running your own containers.
|
| I have spent a fair amount of time using just an iPad Pro while
| travelling. To be honest, I have been finding a much cheaper
| Lenovo Chromebook to be better in some regards: slightly
| lighter, and Linux container support makes it possible to do
| some things locally. For deep learning, I like Colab, and any
| device is OK for that.
| bachmeier wrote:
| > I have been finding a much cheaper Lenovo Chromebook to be
| better in some regards
|
| I've been disappointed with my Lenovo Chromebook. It's more
| unstable than Windows 98 for anyone that yearns for the good
| old days. Several times a day I would be typing away and it
| would restart without warning. The previous sentence is past
| tense because I gave up and now use only the browser.
| ghuntley wrote:
| Geoff here from Gitpod. Compsci adjacent languages is an area
| where Gitpod really shines because it enables you to share
| whatever you are hacking on without subjecting who you are
| sharing it with, without the burden of installing
| dependencies. We see lots of folks using Gitpod to develop
| their own toy compilers and sharing "launch my compiler"
| links on reddit asking for feedback.
|
| Thus, yes, indeed Haskell and SBCL or anything works
| exceptionally well - even operating systems such as NixOS
| https://github.com/gitpod-io/template-nixos
|
| Re: Hask
|
| https://github.com/gitpod-io/template-haskell or
| https://github.com/gitpod-io/template-haskell-nix
| dwmbt wrote:
| works great for Rust and Elixir in my experience, granted
| those languages have very forgiving installation processes. i
| use GitPod on my iPad and Linux machines for misc. editing
| projects outside of my main machine.
|
| ex. i was on vacation visiting my twin for a week and left my
| daily driver at home to wind down -> got a gh notification
| about a bug and released a PR on my sister's computer within
| a couple hours.
| simonw wrote:
| It basically gives you an Ubuntu instance that you can run
| shell commands on, so if you can apt-get install it you can
| run it just fine.
| ghuntley wrote:
| Howdy Simon. Thanks for the vouch. If other folks run workshops
| and are interested about Gitpod please read my blog post at
| https://www.gitpod.io/blog/workshops-as-code and send me an
| email.
| barefeg wrote:
| It's all rainbows until you need to hit the escape key... my iPad
| setup has been collecting dust since
| barefeg wrote:
| My point is YMMV but the tech to run remote environments and
| connect to them using vscode on browser has been there for
| several years now. My main issue was the hardware (different
| keys and supported shortcuts in the browser). But I guess
| pointing someone's real life experience merits HN downvotes
| pieterk wrote:
| You can remap modifier keys now. I've changed caps lock to
| escape. Settings - General - Keyboard - Hardware Keyboard
| wbkang wrote:
| You can press cmd+. for Esc. Or, are you saying that's too much
| ;)
| barefeg wrote:
| Maybe I didn't commit enough to the platform. It's hard to
| then work on a normal MacBook where the shortcuts are
| different. I remember some didn't work on the browser (I want
| to say cmd + d but not 100% sure)
| postalrat wrote:
| Is there a shortcut for cmd? I don't have that key.
| Jtsummers wrote:
| If you mean this sincerely, it's the key with this symbol:
| [?].
| ghuntley wrote:
| Remap capslock to escape in the iOS settings. Also there are
| many portable mechanical Bluetooth / usb keyboards out there
| these days...
| nirav72 wrote:
| Can't you use a bt or usb keyboard? I haven't tried using an
| ipad for dev work. So just curious.
| barefeg wrote:
| I use a Bluetooth keyboard but for iPads. I'm not sure a
| normal one can circumvent the issue though, especially with
| unsupported browser shortcuts
| satran wrote:
| I bought my iPad Pro 12" given the form factor in 2020. Here's my
| two cents on coding on it.
|
| It's a brilliant form factor for writing. Get a Bluetooth
| keyboard and place the iPad vertically it's perfect to write
| with. I also hoped to code on it. I do connect to a raspberry pi
| to run Emacs. Coding on it depends on what you want to create. If
| it is backend servers, parsers, or anything that can be tested on
| your remote machine it works really well. The moment you want to
| do web development or create iOS apps you hit a wall. The form
| factor is great but the software is terrible for coding. Great
| for consuming, and occasionally for some productive work.
| goosedragons wrote:
| I had a similar experience. Mainly wanted to do stuff with R
| and LaTeX, and doing workarounds to view plots gets tired fast.
| Didn't help that my Mac Mini I was connecting to would often
| lose WiFi but not auto-reconnect (no wired option where I was
| living at the time). What's super depressing is my $80 Kindle
| Fire is a more capable device thanks to Termux+X11 server
| despite being multitudes slower as you can do everything on the
| device.
| bogwog wrote:
| Couldn't you use jupyter notebooks for R? Idk about Latex,
| but there's probably a plugin out there for it.
| goosedragons wrote:
| Maybe. IDK. I typically think of those as a Python thing
| and personally I was never very fond of jupyter notebooks
| so it's not something I thought of. For LaTeX I bought
| TeXpad which is okay but you sometimes needed to access
| their cloud servers to compile with certain packages. iPad
| is a very workaroundy workflow for coding.
| searchableguy wrote:
| I recently bought the Samsung tab s8.
|
| It comes with Dex. Dex is like running chrome OS (desktop window
| management).
|
| You can run full KVM and install apps from outside the store on
| android unlike iPad OS.
|
| Emulators run great on it. You can run vscode server in the VM
| and use it via chrome. You can get desktop grade experience with
| chrome including developers tool.
|
| It has potential to replace my main device with android 13 making
| it easier to use KVM without hacks.
|
| https://www.xda-developers.com/android-13-dp1-google-pixel-6...
| epolanski wrote:
| I have a galaxy S7 FE, 500$, includes an s pen, 12.8". Would
| never switch to the much pricier, smaller and more limited
| ipad.
| major505 wrote:
| So far the best solution I saw using a tablet for coding was
| connecting the tablet to a rapsberry pi and sing network over
| usb-c and doing the work in the Pi with ssh connection. Is jenk
| but it does work.
| falcolas wrote:
| And the pendulum swings another few degrees towards thin clients
| and "mainframes".
|
| I don't think it's necessarily a bad thing, but it's definitely a
| more common thing as even our super powerful laptops can't run
| full application backend (not saying they couldn't if it was a
| goal, but they can't).
| imchillyb wrote:
| The world's rich and powerful want you to rent your software,
| and allowing them to force us into mainframe/client
| architecture again, will force us to rent hardware as well.
|
| I want to own, not rent. Thus, I will never support
| mainframe/client architecture for end-users, or developers.
| josephcsible wrote:
| You don't need to be opposed to that kind of architecture to
| avoid that problem. You just need to make sure everything
| running on the "mainframe" side is licensed under the AGPL.
| ghuntley wrote:
| Yep. Gitpod is thin client for hipsters. Unlike Virtual Desktop
| Infrastructure which is all about unburdening system
| administrators at the expense of developer happiness. Cloud-
| based, reproducible developer environments like Gitpod are all
| about developer experience and sparking joy for software
| engineers.
|
| See https://Ghuntley.com/anywhere for further thoughts on the
| flip and flop.
| madrox wrote:
| I credit the iPad with my switch to a MS Surface Pro. I loved the
| iPad experience so much that I really wanted it to work as a
| coding machine, but ran into significant barriers that left me
| feeling that it wasn't ready back in 2019. However, the Surface
| is just a windows machine with a similar form factor, and
| returning to Windows after a 10 year hiatus left me feeling
| pleased at how much better it is for development these days.
| blowski wrote:
| Recently, I've seen much talk about writing code on an iPad.
| What's the use case here, or are people just geeking out over
| what's possible?
| brimble wrote:
| It saves you buying and/or carrying yet another device, if you
| have or are going to have an iPad anyway.
| blowski wrote:
| So this is an alternative to a laptop for those who have a
| desktop?
| brimble wrote:
| Who have a desktop, or who'd like to try to drop to just
| one device for whatever reason (cost, easier traveling,
| minimalism, whatever)
| spogbiper wrote:
| wouldn't it make sense to drop the ipad and/or desktop,
| since the laptop can do what either of those can do?
|
| of course with some exceptions like hardcore gaming
| brimble wrote:
| A laptop can't do all the things an iPad can. Other
| things, it can, but it's worse for them. It's not as
| practical to add on hardware & software to make a laptop
| able to do those things, as it is to add a keyboard and
| pointing device to an iPad and try to attack the problem
| from the other direction, _if_ you don 't strictly _need_
| some of the things that a laptop can do but an iPad can
| 't (local virtual machines, for example).
| criddell wrote:
| The more likely reason is the iPad has software that the
| laptop does not. If you need to use Procreate or
| GoodNotes (for example), then it might make sense to find
| some compromise solution for the rest of the work that
| you would normally do on a laptop.
| brimble wrote:
| That's could be part of it, but for AR, drawing or (hand)
| writing, reading long-form text, applications that
| involve putting your device where a piece of paper or a
| paper notebook might go (lecterns, music stands),
| anything that requires or is made better by orientation
| sensors and accelerometers, basically anything involving
| a camera that's not video conferencing, plus probably
| some other stuff I'm forgetting about, the format and
| hardware capabilities of an iPad make it significantly
| better than a laptop.
|
| Laptops are better at some other things, but if you do
| very much of the above you're probably gonna have a
| tablet, too. _If_ you don 't do much of what laptops can
| do that iPads can't (mostly for software-limitations
| reasons), then replacing the laptop with your tablet
| might be a viable approach. You can't really do the
| reverse without a bunch of extra hardware (admittedly,
| you do need a keyboard and some kind of pointing device
| for the iPad-as-laptop-replacement thing, too) or just
| carrying two devices.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| The iPad format is really convenient in situations where
| a laptop can be a drag.
| xiphias2 wrote:
| Just as an example iPads have usually better screen than
| laptops, so if you work outside in a sunny place at a caffee
| place, iPad may be a better device to bring with you.
| wonderbore wrote:
| I think most just geek out; I find it exciting when I can open
| iSH.app on my phone.
|
| In practice though I think it's just a painful experience since
| everything that's easy to do on your computer now needs a brand
| new, bespoke and paid solution.
|
| Gitpod is just a free VSCode instance. On a computer you have
| _the option_ to use this cloud instance; on the iPad you _must_
| use it.
| madoublet wrote:
| I think it is Surface envy. The iPads are just not very capable
| in productivity scenarios and Macs are not very flexible. So,
| if you want a touchscreen device for leisure and a productive
| device work work, you end up with two machines with very
| similar specs on the inside. It does not make a whole lot of
| sense, but it is the state of the Apple ecosystem. Now,
| Microsoft has a whole bunch of other problems (mainly around
| reliability) that make the Surface a bit of a mess. But, they
| do seem to have the right form factor for modern computing.
| dwmbt wrote:
| mentioned this in another comment but my use case is mostly not
| wanting to spend a lot of time setting up a dev environment on
| a machine i rarely use for programming. in my case, sometimes i
| like to do my code reviews in bed and/or in an emergency be
| able to quickly access my env prod.
|
| it's mostly a novelty to ':0' at but i'm sure it's useful for
| showing people how to get started. i could easily see an intro
| workshop making use of gitpod and advertising it as a platform
| agnostic beginner course!
| protoman3000 wrote:
| Just let me boot macOS on that M1 iPad and I'm happy. I'd even
| pay a premium for this luxury.
| nojito wrote:
| Just buy a MacBook.
| vorpalhex wrote:
| Hah, joke is on you, MacOS becomes closer to iPadOS every
| release!
| brimble wrote:
| People've been saying that since I started using macOS around
| 2010, and I still don't know what they mean.
| smoldesu wrote:
| I mean, with Big Sur it's pretty hard to _not_ see where
| they 're coming from: big round borders, bloated quick
| settings menu and widgets that somehow manage to be equally
| as useless as they are on iPad... as a fan of 201x-2018-era
| MacOS, I'm pretty dissatisfied with the latest releases.
| Compared to Mojave, it feels much less like a professional
| workstation OS and more like a LeapPad with POSIX
| compliance.
| core-utility wrote:
| Those are mostly design changes though, not a full blown
| merge of two operating systems. One could say MacOS
| _looks_ closer to iPadOS every release, but that doesn 't
| indicate they're merging.
| smoldesu wrote:
| The case could be made for either. On a technical level,
| Apple is depreciating their desktop APIs in favor of
| their mobile-first solutions (like Metal) as well as
| encouraging developers to target iPad/iOS first, then
| port to desktop later (with Catalyst). Hell, they even
| switched Mac hardware to closer resemble iDevice
| internals with their Apple Silicon switch. You can't
| really blame them, since mobile is their moneymaker and
| it's only natural for them to want to cater to them
| first, but it's hard to deny that MacOS is converging
| with mobile workflows and not the other way around.
| panta wrote:
| It's more probable that they'll let you boot iPadOS on that
| MacBook, asking a premium for the luxury (removing macOS of
| course)
| Jtsummers wrote:
| You can run iPadOS and iOS apps on macOS (if you have the M1
| processor Macs). There is no point in booting iPadOS on your
| MBP hardware.
| tl wrote:
| Not quite. Apple requires app developers to opt into Mac
| distribution. The non-zero cost of doing so on top of
| testing costs for a new platform (testers may have iPads
| but not Macs) in addition to fear of the new ability to
| access the sandbox directly (the horror if players were
| allowed to edit-in 100,000 gems instead of buying them with
| IAP) killed a large amount of potential Mac support.
| evilduck wrote:
| Most App Store developers have opted out of letting you run
| their iPadOS or iOS apps on macOS. Most of the interesting
| stuff is blocked and the stuff that does remain is filled
| with weird UX inconsistencies. From my own decade of App
| Store purchases, I've found none that opted in to it that I
| thought were worth using on macOS consistently. It's not
| really a headlining feature and it still doesn't make for a
| productive software developer tablet experience.
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