Kubernetes as a Development Platform - Lessons from Eclipse Che

Learn about the evolution and challenges of using Kubernetes for development environments in this EclipseCon 2023 conference talk presented by Red Hat engineers Mario Loriedo and Ilya Buziuk. Explore the journey of Eclipse Che's transition from Virtual Machines to containers and ultimately to Kubernetes, examining the controversial decision to run development workspaces as Kubernetes Pods. Discover the initial challenges faced in permissions, storage, and networking, along with architectural adaptations made through the DevWorkspace operator. Gain insights into emerging challenges related to ephemeral containers and vertical autoscalers, while evaluating whether Kubernetes - a platform designed for unprivileged, containerized, and scalable payloads - is suitable for hosting traditionally single-user monolithic development environments. Analyze the trade-offs between the benefits of lightweight, ephemeral, and scalable development environments against the complexities of adapting Kubernetes for developer tools.