Codespaces goes GA for all GitHub users
GitHub is extending Codespaces availability to all Free and Pro plan users this week, along with free monthly usage allowances—up to 60 hours for Free users and 90 hours for Pro users. Previously restricted to Team and Enterprise plans following its general availability last year, the cloud development environment service has been adopted by hundreds of thousands of developers across organizations, open source projects, and individual learning contexts.
The announcement came alongside a range of new capabilities revealed at GitHub Universe 2022, including expanded editor support, GPU-powered machine types, repository templates, and organization-level management tooling.
Expanded editor support
Codespaces now supports JetBrains IDEs in public beta, complementing existing integrations with VS Code (browser and desktop), VIM, and emacs. Users can connect to a codespace through JetBrains Gateway, installing the GitHub Codespaces plugin from the JetBrains Marketplace. The integration works with JetBrains IDEs such as IntelliJ and PyCharm.
For data science and machine learning work, JupyterLab is also available in public beta. Alongside these environment choices, GPU-powered Codespaces are entering limited beta, allowing developers to run complex ML models more quickly then they could on typical desktop hardware. Requests for GPU access can be submitted through the machine type sign-up form; documentation covers code examples and usage guidance for the machine type.
Starting new projects with templates
Codespaces introduces repository template support, creating single-click paths into pre-configured development environments with no setup or configuration needed. After starting, users can write, test, and debug code directly, with any forwarded ports made accessible automatically. For more advanced scenarios, a development container configuration can add custom dependencies, scripts, pre-opened files, services, and app output rendering to personalize the startup experience.
Documentation covers both how to form a repository template and how to devise a development container, letting framework authors lower the barrier for new users trying their stack.
Learning paths and skill development
For newcomers and experienced developers alike, LinkedIn Learning is offering more than 50 Codespaces-enabled courses covering six programming languages plus web development, data science, AI, and ML. The courses are free on LinkedIn Learning through February 2023.
Scale and governance for organizations
For Teams and Enterprises, Codespaces now provides organization-level APIs that are generally available, enabling management operations that integrate with existing workflows and automation. Administrators can also enforce cost control, compliance, and security policies across organization-owned codespaces, covering machine type access restrictions, base image constraints, and forwarded port visibility.
Prebuilds extended to open source
Codespaces prebuilds have been generally available since June and are designed to reduce startup time for extensive codebases. GitHub data shows that with prebuilds in place, its own engineering team cut environment bootstrap time from 45 minutes to 10 seconds. That performance gain is why GitHub is extending prebuilds for free to open source projects hosted in free organizations.
Maintainers can apply for prebuild storage grants; recipients would gain access to the faster experience that's typically tied to variable compute costs, without the corresponding bill.
