Optimize gitpod workspace image for Meltano

[andrewcstewart]

Background

The workspace setup by the plugin's gitpod configuration is a bit convoluted at the moment. Part of the workspace is defined in the installed .gitpod/Dockerfile, and part in the installed .gitpod.yml. The latter contains the following, for example:

  - name: meltano setup
    env:
      PIP_USER: false
    init: |
      export PIP_USER=false
      cd meltano
      python3 -m venv .venv
      source .venv/bin/activate
      mkdir .meltano
      pip install meltano
      meltano install

This state is largely a historical remnant from multiple rounds of troubleshooting due to changes in the underlying gitpod workspace image (ie gitpod/workspace-full, etc) or in some cases dependency breakages.

Another reason this is overly complicated is because gitpod's default python environment in its official workspace images is opinionated towards pyenv. So there are some workarounds in this plugin's configuration.

Meltano has had some conflicts with other Python dependency manager systems (see https://gitlab.com/meltano/meltano/-/issues/141), so it might be worth consulting with folks on the Meltano team to figure out what kind of workspace image is going to place nicely with Meltano.

Problem

It would be great to formulate a new gitpod configuration (some combination of .gitpod.yml and Dockerfile) that is more native-Meltano-friendly.

• Q: Why not just use the official Meltano docker image?
• A: We could, but the Gitpod provided workspace images to include some additional tools that are handy for development, like docker(-in-docker), etc.

Related information...

Relevant feature request I left over at gitpod: gitpod-io/workspace-images#870

Current list of gitpod provided workspace images: https://github.com/gitpod-io/workspace-images

Example of a Dockerfile that might serve as good example: https://github.com/ElectronicBabylonianLiterature/ebl-api/blob/master/.gitpod.Dockerfile