Self hosting milestone for next gen Che

[slemeur]

Description

Motivations

As we are defining the new generation Che (see #8266), we also need to nail down the developer experience of Che as well as all the necessary capabilities and features nedeed to make Che, the best IDE to create and author Che plugins.

We are targeting an initial milestone for the new generation Che which will provide the basic capabilities so that the new generation of Che can be used to build it.

Capabilities / Features

Run Theia on workspace as a sidecar

Che's ide will be provided as a sidecar container from the workspace's runtime.

Linked Issues:

• Theia stacks from Florent's theia prototype  #8600

Workspace Loader UI

The new Che's IDE will be running in a sidecar container. When the user will be starting a workspace, the system will prepare the sidecar to provide the IDE to the user. The system will pull the sidecar's image, start the container and once running, the system will be able to provide the IDE.

Until the sidecar for the IDE is ready, there will be loading step which will be displaying to the user, what the system is actually doing.

Linked Issues:

Terminal Agent

The terminal agent will need to be adapt so that it can work properly in the sidecar situation.

• update to theia for working with terminal server
• solve launching terminal server on runtime container

Linked Issues:

• https://github.com/eclipse/che-theia-terminal-plugin

Debugger

In order to be able to develop plugins for the next gen Che, the debugger needs to be present in the IDE.

Linked Issues: #8383

Host Mode

We will need to provide a complete host mode within Che.
As the nature of the plugins might be different, we need to handle the various situation

• Client side only plugin
• Server side only plugin
• Client and Server side plugin
• Client and Server as sidecar plugin

The host mode, will have to handle those various scenarios.

A specific set of commands will be documented to allow the developer to build, run, debug and package his plugin.

Linked Issues:

• Run separate instance of Theia server with plugin that is developing Run separate instance of Theia server with plugin that is developing #9212
• Add UI to differ developer mode in Theia Add UI to differ developer mode in Theia #9214

Language servers

Implementation of the Language servers for the next gen Che will need some work:

• The support of the Language Server in Theia is not a completed as in Che
• The LS running in sidecars, there will be a different mecanism for launching the language servers and activating them on the client-side.
• Architectural differences

Linked Issues: #8514

Plugin model for next gen Che

We need to define the plugin model for next gen Che.
See: eclipse-theia/theia#1482

A plugin will be be packaged in a way to allow those different cases.

Linked Issues:

CI job from master for use with Che workspace

Linked Issues:

Developer mode target platform

Developer mode in Che must be running on OpenShift and other infrastructures.

Linked issues

#8266
#6713

[dneary]

Just to clarify: "Self-hosting Che" means developing Che in Che? Or does it mean something more?

I have had some issues with workspaces failing to open with no obvious error, and no real indication of how to fix it, for both Che and Che + Theia. Would ennumerating issues related to this be in-scope for this issue?

[PavelSosin]

Do you know some running projects of DAP services containerization? Until, at least, DAP services for java and nodejs will be conteinerized it is impossible to proceed to IDE integration. The minimal requirement for DAP debugger delivery to customer is deployment of Docker stack built from DAP Server and NGINX proxy to very basic swarm. I also can't find statement how DAP server is integrated: side-car with mapping to workspace, like jdt in eclipse or separate pod? Other combinations either have very poor protocol stability or non-secure.
All orchestration issues can be solved very fast.

[slemeur]

closing as out of date epic