Back in May, Microsoft introduced GitHub Codespaces, which is a web-based development tool in a cloud environment on GitHub. It allows users to start coding on the platform quickly. This means now proprietary development environment is needed. “Codespaces can be configured to load your code and dependencies, developer tools, extensions, and dotfiles. Switching between environments is simple—you can navigate away at any time, and when you switch back, your codespace is automatically reopened.” At the time, Microsoft did not say how much GitHub Codespaces will cost. In September, the company decided the new GitHub experience will replace Visual Studio Codespaces. According to Microsoft, VS Codespaces will shutter in 2021. This was an interesting decision because VS Codespaces never even left preview. “After the GitHub-native experience was released, we started hearing that the two distinct experiences were causing confusion amongst our users… We believe that by consolidating the current Codespaces experiences into one, we can eliminate confusion, simplify the experience for everyone, and make more rapid progress to address customer feedback.” The timeline for the transition from Visual Studio to GitHub Codespaces looks like this:
November 20, 2020 – Creation of new plans and codespaces will be disabled, although existing codespaces may continue to be used. New users will only be able to sign up for Codespaces on GitHub. February 17, 2021 – The Visual Studio Codespaces portal will be retired. All plans and codespaces remaining in the service will be deleted.
Pricing
Users can tap into GitHub Codespaces through a browser-like variant of the Visual Studio Code editor. In this editor, users can work with terminal access, extensions, and other tools. Furthermore, dev’s can use the Codespaces feature directly from their IDE. So, the big news with Visual Studio Code version 1.51 is details about pricing for the new GitHub development experience.
Basic Linux bundle (2 CPU cores, 4GB of RAM and 32GB of SSD storage) costs $0.085 per hour Standard (4 CPU cores, 8GB of RAM, and 32GB of SSD storage) costs $0.169 per hour Premium (8 CPU cores, 16GB of RAM, and 32GB of SSD storage) costs $0.339 per hour.
All individual codespaces cost $0.10 per GB per month until they are deleted.
Visual Studio Code Features
Version 1.51 of VS Code also includes some new tools. For example, pinned tabs will now be more visible on the workbench, a customer hover is available for extension trees, and users can move the cursor when suggestions are showing. Furthermore, it is now possible to install a Visual Studio Code extension without needing to synchronize it. However, sync will need to be enabled in the settings.
