Coder.com•2w ago

Is there any way to persist files when restarting a coder workspace?

I’m using coder_agent, and in the startup_script, I have logic that clones a Git repo and runs yarn install. The problem is that the yarn install step takes about 10 minutes, which significantly slows down workspace startup. However, I only really need this to run the first time the workspace is created — not every time it’s restarted. I tried adding a check like this:

if [ ! -d "/home/coder/my-repo" ]; then
    echo "Repository not found. Cloning and installing dependencies..."
    git clone https://example.com/my-repo.git /home/coder/my-repo
    cd /home/coder/my-repo
    yarn install
else
    echo "Repository already exists. Skipping setup."
fi

if [ ! -d "/home/coder/my-repo" ]; then
    echo "Repository not found. Cloning and installing dependencies..."
    git clone https://example.com/my-repo.git /home/coder/my-repo
    cd /home/coder/my-repo
    yarn install
else
    echo "Repository already exists. Skipping setup."
fi

But the condition always returns false (the repo isn't present). Is there a recommended way to run expensive setup steps only on initial workspace creation, and skip them on restarts? Thanks in advance!

16 Replies

Codercord•2w ago

<#1358895812154888452>

Category

Help needed

Product

Coder (v2)

Platform

Linux

Logs

Please post any relevant logs/error messages.

Igor ZimmerOP•2w ago

Still can't make it work

Scott•2w ago

What runtime environment are you running Coder in? Docker, k8s, VM?

Igor ZimmerOP•2w ago

VM, on an EC2 Instance /close

Phorcys•2w ago

hey, were you able to get this solved? apologies for the delays

Igor ZimmerOP•2w ago

Yes, I just needed to alocate an EIP manually in my main.tf template I think it's because of my specific need (VPN, private subnets, etc) But now it works I have one question, is there a way to force a port forward in the template? I currently need to add a port (10000) manually in my VSCode port forward

Phorcys•2w ago

good thanks for following up what do you mean? you can define a coder_app resource to have a custom button in the web ui like VSCode and others that points to a specific URL https://registry.terraform.io/providers/coder/coder/latest/docs/resources/app

Igor ZimmerOP•2w ago

My application needs a specific port, it automatically forwards some of them (like in the image), but some of them (like the 10000) I needed to add manually

Igor ZimmerOP•2w ago

I don't really know if it's a Coder specific question tbh

Phorcys•2w ago

VSCode is detecting these ports automatically by what's running in the env and what you're running in the terminal there should be a way to tell VSCode to automatically forward certain ports but I can't seem to find it, it should be some kind of json file in your project but honestly i would recommend using coder_apps instead, or Coder's port-forwarding feature, it will save you the hassle of having to forward something locally

Phorcys•2w ago

all these buttons are coder_apps and can be configured to reverse-proxy a specific URL through Coder

Phorcys•2w ago

and the port-forwarding lets you open any http server that's listening in the workspace

Phorcys•2w ago

of course this is all limited to http/https in the web, so if you need other protocols then VSCode's port-forwarding or coder port-forward is your best bet

Igor ZimmerOP•7d ago

For my team's setup we ended up just extending our config.json file that had some other configs to port forward what we needed, it was only 5 ports so it wasn't much of a problem to do it this way But thank you so much for taking the time to explain the coder_app feature, it will be useful for another part of our project

Phorcys•7d ago

yeah pretty much sounds good!

Codercord•7d ago

@Phorcys closed the thread.

Gaming

Programming

Is there any way to persist files when restarting a coder workspace?

Did you find this page helpful?