Sunset Che Theia as a built-in Che editor

[l0rd]

Is your enhancement related to a problem? Please describe

Eclipse Theia has been the default editor for Che workspaces for the last few years. Based on a survey among our (Red Hat) customers, we have started supporting VS Code OSS and JetBrains IDEs as built-in editors too.

Now, considered the effort required to maintain che-theia and the small size of the team of Red Hat contributors maintaining Che, we are going to progressively stop supporting Theia as a built-in Che editor.

Describe the solution you'd like

This is the estimated timeline:

• Complete the support for VS Code in air gap clusters Eclipse Che v7.54 (September 2022)
• Make VS Code the default IDE Eclipse Che v7.56 (November 2022)
• Remove Theia among the list of built-in IDEs Eclipse Che v7.64 (April 2022)

The last step includes the following subtasks:

• Remove che-theia among the list of IDE that can be selected from Dashboard samples
• Remove che-theia from the plugin registry Remove che-theia references from the plugin registry #22090
• Remove che-theia plugins from the plugin registry Remove che-theia references from the plugin registry #22090
• Remove che-theia references from the devfile registry Remove che-theia references from the devfile registry #22091
• Archive che-theia, che-theia sidecars GitHub repositories (as well as any other che-theia related GH repo)
• Close area/editor/che-theia issues
• Update documentation (workspace sizing and architecture sections in particular)
• Update happy path tests to use VS Code and IntelliJ rather than Theia
• Ensure we have a smooth path for updating CheCluster CR (also https://issues.redhat.com/browse/CRW-4077)

Other things to consider

Check these projects for theia refs:

• che-dashboard
• che-plugin-registry
• che-devfile-registry
• che-operator & operator-bundle (should be generated from plugin registry)

Should verify if these need an update too:

• che-server
• devworkspace operator & bundle

Will also need to:

• disable the che-theia builds / stop publishing quay images
• mark the quay repo read-only / archived
• remove theia/endpoint/dev from the orchestrations in che-release (yamls and bash scripts)

Downstream issues:

https://issues.redhat.com/browse/CRW-3663
https://issues.redhat.com/browse/CRW-4077

Describe alternatives you've considered

We would be happy to reconsider this decision if a team volunteers to maintain upstream Theia as a Che editor.

[nickboldt]

PR to remove theia from operator payload: eclipse-che/che-operator#1635

[l0rd]

@ibuziuk as soon as Theia has been removed from the plugin registry and is not used by Che anymore we are going to archive the git repositories.

[svor]

Che-theia was removed from the plugin and devfile registries
cc @l0rd @ibuziuk

[ibuziuk]

thank @svor
@l0rd I believe we can archive the repos and close the issue

[ibuziuk]

Gitlab for archiving che-theia - https://gitlab.eclipse.org/eclipsefdn/helpdesk/-/issues/2906
Once done we can close the epic

[ibuziuk]

'che-theia' has been archived. Closing the issue as done

[maheshrajrp]

Hi @l0rd , @ibuziuk ,
We have a project using Theia ground up. We are facing issue with making it work with the latest Eclipse Che as we have upgraded to Eclipse Che 7.81 now. What are the options available to us ?

Thanks

[monaka]

Just in my impression, a sunsetting Che-theia means "contributors from RH won't develop it any more".
So everyone can fork and maintain it.
I guess it's not so hard to add new editor to Che (I developed Vim for Che before).
@l0rd @ibuziuk Is my thought reasonable?

[maheshrajrp]

@monaka Thanks for responding.

I am okay with forking and maintaining this. I would even contribute to this repo.

When I upgraded to latest che I faced "Didn't receive URL" issue when I integrated with my Custom Theia IDE. I would like to understand the reason why. I believe the issue to be with Theia integrating with Eclipse Che. Wish there were some proper documentation on how to integrate or create an IDE to work with Eclipse Che.

Pointing to the issue raised:
#22854

Also, there multiple plugins are missing README in the Che-Theia repo which makes it difficult to even understand and deters from possible take overs. It would be helpful if you could provide insider info on these.
https://github.com/eclipse-che/che-theia/tree/main/extensions/eclipse-che-theia-plugin-remote

In the end, had to drop the Eclipse Che upgrade completely owing to these issues and possibly thinking of building inhouse system or working with Theia Cloud.
https://theia-cloud.io/

I would like to understand it a bit more to validate if I could talk to my organization to contribute to the repo as we are heavily dependent on this.

Thanks again. Hope something fruitful comes out of this convo.

[monaka]

@maheshrajrp I think it's reasonable to consider using Theia-Cloud if you don't use Che-Theia style plugins.

Really, I have to backport Che-Theia someday.
Because, sadly :-), some of my customers expect Che-Theia with plugins.
But the release date is undefined now.

I hope you stay tuned even if you use Theia-Cloud. Thanks.

[maheshrajrp]

@monaka Thanks. Yeah, Theia Cloud sounds promising doing some PoC with that.
Anyways, let me know when you pickup Che-Theia, I might be able to contribute.

Thanks for the response.

[maheshrajrp]

Hi @l0rd,
Btwn I would like to understand more on this, I've added this to next community discussion agenda. I hope that is fine.
Thanks.

[l0rd]

@maheshrajrp you can ping us on the Eclipse Cloud Dev Tools slack and anyway I recently moved to a different project.

[maheshrajrp]

Thanks, @l0rd . Will do that.

[l0rd]

Here is a PoC https://github.com/l0rd/theia-editor/