Is OpenShift Dev Spaces a useful tool for application development
Here in this blog, we are going to learn Whether Open Shift Dev Spaces is a useful tool for application development or not.
The majority of developers enjoy writing, validating, and debugging code, and they frequently do this on their work computers. There is an inner loop where developers concentrate on each particular development workflow and discover flaws early on. The higher-level development cycle, which includes testing, integration, deployment, and release, is included in the outer loop. It emphasizes teamwork, integration, and making sure the entire program runs well and achieves business objectives.
Red Hat OpenShift Dev Spaces are located inside of this inner loop. Since it is a Web-based IDE, creating containerized apps simply requires a browser.
The written code is then submitted to a central repository, like Git Hub, where it can be shared and used in the testing, staging, and CI/CD processes. The outer loop, often referred to as the CI/CD pipeline or the software development lifecycle, is a series of steps and procedures that begin with the first code commit to the Source Code Management (SCM) system and end with the deployment of a reliable and well-tested application in production. In order to guarantee code quality, collaboration, testing, deployment, and release, it includes a variety of processes and technologies.
The managed OpenShift services like Red Hat OpenShift service on AWS (ROSA) or Azure Red Hat OpenShift (ARO) are located in the outer loop. This managed service provided by Red Hat is a complete platform for managing applications that utilize cloud computing. For IT teams who create and maintain their own application platforms, it makes things simpler. On managed OpenShift offerings, Red Hat OpenShift Dev space can be installed.
Typically, Dev Space operators can be installed on top of any managed solution, such as ROSA or ARO, and when spun, it creates:
- a workspace that serves as a single user’s containerized instance of the development environment. It comes with all the required build tools, runtimes, binaries, and plug-ins for the browser-based editor.
- DevFile, an OpenShift template for customizing your development environment. It can be used to store the YAML-based written instructions for setting up and running your development environment. It offers the ability to choose your own IDE and gives consistency for all developers. Read our blog post on integrating DevSpaces with VSCode for more information.
- Every office is a pod. Projects, components, commands, events, and registries are all parts of DevFile. The workspace’s containers are described in the component section. Each component has its own set of dependencies and tools and is defined as a container image. As an illustration, you could define a container for tools with a database requirement and an editor with extensions for Visual Studio Code. PV is used for the source code, while endpoints are used to expose the tools and apps. Within an OpenShift cluster, developers may code, deploy, and test using a single pod.
- A browser is required for daily development work by developers.
Other developer tools compatible with Dev Spaces include the following:
Red Hat OpenShift builds that let you deploy your source code straight to OpenShift as a container image.
Build container images and push them to the registry using Red Hat OpenShift Pipelines. Workflows for CI/CD can be managed as code. This makes application deployments automated, consistent, and repeatable. A YAML file that lists the actions and duties needed to generate tests and deploy apps can be used to define pipelines.
OpenShift by Red Hat A single source of truth is made possible via GitOps. GitOps is a tool that teams may use to develop declarative infrastructure management and continuous delivery; it monitors changes, updates a manifest, and publishes various manifest versions v1 and v2.
Red Hat Service Mesh offers platform features like traffic management and telemetry to enable seamless interaction between various components of your application.
What Makes OpenShift Dev Spaces a Good Option for Development Teams
Client applications, JavaScript running in your browser, a server backend, and a database operating inside or outside of OpenShift make up this web-based IDE. The majority of IDEs are client programs that developers can set up on their workstations, which has several disadvantages.
A project’s or an organization’s demand on resources, such as infrastructure, time, and effort, is likely to be higher when there are many developers working on it. By offering a uniform process, fostering code-sharing, and peer review, Dev Spaces reduces developers’ need to overprovision infrastructure and install redundant tools. This prevents redundant development efforts.
We’ve all heard developers declare, “It works on my machine,” despite the fact that there are several differences between the development and production environments. Dev Spaces bring the development environment closer to the intended output, which aids teams in finding issues before they become major ones.
When code is on a single person’s computer, there is a lot of risk. Since the code for Dev Spaces is kept in one place, there is less security risk and developers must adhere to strict security guidelines. Development teams can improve security, communicate more productively, and lessen the possibility of security vulnerabilities by providing a controlled and standardized environment for code management.
Workspaces can be simply shared by developers. The same access management solutions used throughout the rest of the company are utilized to secure the complete development workspace and source code access.
