Will Positron IDE eventually be made available to Posit Workbench as a web-based IDE?

[DaveGuenther]

This would be nice to see along-side Code Server, Jupyter, and RStudio options.

[jthomasmock]

Thanks for your interest!

Yes, we plan to have preview support for Positron sessions in Posit Workbench in 2024.

[juliasilge]

@ZhimingYe you can read (and subscribe, if you like) about plans for using the open source SSH tunneling extension in #2307.

[jrosell]

@jthomasmock Free Posit Workbench could be useful for SMB, but reading this thread, I wonder few things:

• Visual Studio Code Dev Containers feature is very nice for projects with people using mac, linux, windows (It uses Docker to replicate same IDE for multiple S.O). Could we have instructions to build a custom positron installation so we can be able have our same custom dev container in mac, linux, windows?
• Another idea: Will it be possible to dockarize positron ide and be able to use it in the browser from mac, linux, windows?

I don't know if that is dreaming. Sorry if that's the case.

[jrosell]

Well, one can already run a Linux container on that beefy server with some lightweight GUI like Xfce and rdp/vnc, also install Positron in there, connect using RDP/VNC client.

@e-kotov does it work in mac, linux and windows? Wouldn't be easier to use vs code dev containers or a browser?

[e-kotov]

Well, one can already run a Linux container on that beefy server with some lightweight GUI like Xfce and rdp/vnc, also install Positron in there, connect using RDP/VNC client.

@e-kotov does it work in mac, linux and windows? Wouldn't be easier to use vs code dev containers or a browser?

It works on a linux server (the container) with any VNC client on mac/linux/win. It would be easier to use dev containers, but at the moment you cannot install Positron in the container as you can the code-server. However you can install Positron as a GUI app in a container and connect via VNC as I suggested. But yeah, I am waiting for a dev container like experience.

[jthomasmock]

Howdy @jrosell thanks for the questions!

@jthomasmock Free Posit Workbench could be useful for SMB, but reading this thread, I wonder few things:

We also have an SMB (Small Medium Business) policy for Posit Workbench, which is different from academic but includes discounting.

• Visual Studio Code Dev Containers feature is very nice for projects with people using mac, linux, windows (It uses Docker to replicate same IDE for multiple S.O). Could we have instructions to build a custom positron installation so we can be able have our same custom dev container in mac, linux, windows?

The Dev Containers extension is proprietary and cannot be used with Positron or other variations of Code OSS. As a first step, we are currently focused on desktop-to-server remote connections (i.e., the Remote SSH equivalent) to allow users to access server-based compute or environments.

There are potential workflows where Positron is installed locally, and you use a Remote connection to a running container locally or on a remote server. As such, I don't want to speculate further about container support until we first address the remote connection tooling.

• Another idea: Will it be possible to dockarize positron ide and be able to use it in the browser from mac, linux, windows?

I don't know if that is dreaming. Sorry if that's the case.

We don't expect to have native browser-based support for Positron outside of Posit Workbench at this time.