add gitpod config

[RayBB]

In efforts to get GitHub Codespaces to work (#5438) I discovered gitpod.io and got it working.

In short, gitpod is an IDE that runs in the cloud and has a generous free plan. It has the major benefit of requiring zero setup for users to get started making small fixes.

As Mek mentioned, Open Library generally tries to avoid having tool specific files to the repo. However, adding this file will make it significantly easier for new users to start developing.

Right now, gitpod has a pretty generous free plan of 50 hours a month (or 100 hours for students). While we don't want to depend on that I'd say we should utilize it while we can. They also are an open source project so I'm hopeful they'll keep something nice going for the open source community.

• Open ticket with https://contribute.dev/ to add Open Library to projects using gitpod
  • Please add https://github.com/internetarchive/openlibrary/ gitpod-io/contribute.dev#154
• @cdrini can you authorize gitpod for prebuilds? Instructions

PS: I plan to make a short video showing how to get started with gitpods but to do that I'd like to have this working on the main repo not just my fork :)

Technical

chown

The most important thing to discuss here is that we run the command sudo chown -R gitpod:999 /workspace/openlibrary/

You can see an explanation for why here - gitpod-io/gitpod#4851

In short it just has to do with the fact that we use the /openlibrary folder for docker. But gitpods by default uses that path already for the cloned repo. There seems to be a small risk that files could conflict but unless we want to change the folder we mount to there isn't much else we can do.

Tasks

You can read more about tasks here but in short the things in the init step only run once and then are cached for all users.

The command is the part that runs as soon as a user starts the app.

Ports

We ignore all but the 8080 port. All this does it prevent small popups for each port. It's still quite easy to see what's going on with the other ports.

Testing

I guess the easiest way is to test with my branch.

I also posted a video in slack here.

Screenshot

Stakeholders

[cdrini]

Lgtm! Small wording changes + needs a rebase.

[RayBB]

@cdrini added your changes, this is ready to merge

[cdrini]

Ok, I can't really test this; I tried using your fork, but it didn't start the app for me? But I think it might resolve itself once merged. And we've labelled it as experimental, so should be ok. Let's give it a whirl!

[cdrini]

Working like a charm now!