Please use a useful workspace name instead of a nonsensical one

[rfay]

I never can figure out what is in a tab without looking at the code. Instead of a nonsensical name like https://purple-scorpion-d98aj3rj.ws-us04.gitpod.io/ could we have one that hints at the contents?

So for example, if I open up github.com/drud/ddev with GitHub Codespaces I get a URL like this: https://rfay-drud-ddev-479f.github.dev/ - it indicates that it's owned by rfay, and is drud/ddev at 479f. Nice. Thanks! Solves several other name-related complaints here like #3908

Thanks for gitpod! It's amazing.

[csweichel]

This definitely needs feedback from @svenefftinge; wdyt?

(removing from groundwork until this becomes actionable)

[svenefftinge]

I think it's a good improvement. We currently have two name segments followed by 8 characters to make the workspace unique. Since seeing my username as the first segment wouldn't help me to distinguish workspaces, I propose to leave that out.

We can change the name function so that you can optionally pass in two segments that match the regexp [0-9a-z]{2,16}. We could include _ which we use to replace any character that doesn't fit.

For git-based workspaces we can then generate names using org followed by the repo-name.

e.g.: gitpod_io-gitpod-12rpnh3r

[atduarte]

Related with #898 and #4857

[svenefftinge]

We just had another discussion on this. To make sure we are moving in the right direction I'd like to understand what you wrote here:

I get a URL like this: https://rfay-drud-ddev-479f.github.dev/ - it indicates that it's owned by rfay, and is drud/ddev at 479f. Nice.

Assuming that the problem to solve is distinguishing workspaces based on the URL, I don't see how this pattern helps, because

1. all my workspace would start with the same username
2. many people work mostly on one or two projects, so with ephemeral workspaces in Gitpod you'd get many workspaces with the same name I assume.

I can only see this becoming more helpfully once we add information that really separates workspaces from each other (e.g. context, such as mr/pr, issue, branch). But encoding all this into the URL doesn't seem great either. So would it help if we were surfacing the workspace description (derived from context) a bit more again?

I'm thinking about showing the workspace description in the browser tab again and also allow editing it.

[rfay]

1. One doesn't just open their own workspaces... People test drud/ddev, they test shaal/gitpod, they test shaal/Drupalpod, lots of things. That's the whole idea behind Gitpod right? You can just visit a repo and have a workspace to test it.
2. Again... you have deliberately designed GitPod to be used with disposable workspaces, so we'd assume more than just a few.

I welcome editing the name, it would help. But a default name that's meaningful is superb to start with.

[stale]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[rfay]

To me this is still really important. I think you could add a little information to the URL and make gitpod hugely more valuable.

[svenefftinge]

Thanks for keeping this alive @rfay. You might be right that my hypothesis is not accurate.
I also think your argument regarding disposable dev environments is great. Why would we want to give our dev environments names (e.g. purple scorpion) if they are disposable.

So I'd vote for doing as described in #4129 (comment)

cc @jldec

[loujaybee]

Thanks for raising @rfay! I've seen some other issues on this topic that I think have the same underlying issue, but with different proposed solutions. So I wanted to throw in a couple alternative / additional solutions / thoughts:

1. When in a browser context, we could also consider altering or modifying the page title. Allow setting the page title #6360 this has been discussed before.
2. I've seen custom and/or alternate favicons used within CI build tooling for instance. (In the simplest case: red-failed, green-passed). We could consider letting the user pick custom or coloured favicons to assign to their different workspaces to better see (at a glance) their different contexts.
3. Another option is also to better show the context Display Gitpod context prominently in UI #6227 from within the workspace. There's no direct solution suggested there just yet but the problem seems the same. Showing context from within the workspace has the disadvantage of requiring you to actually click the workspace before understanding the context but seems like it's similar/the same as having a custom URL. We could look at something similar to: Add a feature banner to hosted VSCode #6392. I should also note that from usability we have also seen that users sometimes a hard time finding out how to return to the dashboard, so having some thin top banner/nav with some context and a link back to the dashboard might impact usability quite well here and solve Display Gitpod context prominently in UI #6227 at the same time.

Note: From a usability session [1], a user did also raise that they'd like to customise their URL's but the context/problem was a little different, i.e the user wanted to have more static URL's to make sharing them / remembering them more easily.

[rfay]

Thanks for this! It's a great step forward.

https://rfay-ddev-ja8v4i6b4t0.ws-us27.gitpod.io/

[shaal]

Thank you for getting this fixed! It's great.

I found a bug with repos that contain capital letters (ie. DrupalPod), and found the fix for that was already committed today :)
5550be1

How can we tell when will this fix be deployed to live Gitpod workspaces?

[JanKoehnlein]

Next deployment is planned for Tuesday 9am CET Sent via Superhuman iOS ***@***.***>

…

On Sat, Jan 15 2022 at 4:47 AM, Ofer Shaal ***@***.***> wrote: Thank you for getting this fixed! It's great. I found a bug with repos that contain capital letters (ie. DrupalPod), and found the fix for that was already committed today :) 5550be1 <5550be1> How can we tell when will this fix be deployed to live Gitpod workspaces? — Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#4129 (comment)>, or unsubscribe <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/AAC4HGDBSVRSYLU6FOR4IW3UWDU37ANCNFSM436UNNWQ> . Triage notifications on the go with GitHub Mobile for iOS <https://apps.apple.com/app/apple-store/id1477376905?ct=notification-email&mt=8&pt=524675> or Android <https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.github.android&referrer=utm_campaign%3Dnotification-email%26utm_medium%3Demail%26utm_source%3Dgithub>. You are receiving this because you commented.Message ID: ***@***.***>