DevPod is a tool for creating and managing development environments without needing a server-side setup. It can be used as an open-source alternative to GitHub Codespaces, JetBrains Spaces, or Google Cloud Workstations.
Environments run in containers and can be spun up wherever there is a need, such as on a local computer, a cloud machine with many GPUs, or a remote computer. These development environments can be created for any infrastructure, IDE, or programming language.
Every environment is managed by a DevContainer JSON file, making it easy to switch between workspaces hosted in different places.
The project was created in May 2023 by Loft Labs and now has over 8,000 stars on GitHub. According to Fabian Kramm, co-founder and CTO of Loft Labs and a creator and lead maintainer of the project, it was created from a need to have a more streamlined development experience.
He said they wanted to create a tool that would offer consistent and reliable dev environments, regardless of the underlying infrastructure needs.
“DevPod’s value lies in its ability to provide isolated, reproducible development environments that can be spun up in seconds,” said Kramm. “This drastically reduces the onboarding time for new team members and ensures that every developer is working in a consistent environment.”
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