Chapter 1. Release notes

Red Hat CodeReady Workspaces is a web-based integrated development environment (IDE). CodeReady Workspaces runs in OpenShift and is well-suited for container-based development.

This section documents the most important features and bug fixes in Red Hat CodeReady Workspaces. For the list of CodeReady Workspaces 2.4 release issues, see the Chapter 3, Known issues section.

  • To deploy applications to an OpenShift cluster from CodeReady Workspaces, users must log in to the OpenShift cluster from their running workspace using oc login.
  • Having multiple CodeReady Workspaces deployments on the same cluster is not recommended, and the ability to do so may be removed in a future release.

1.1. About Red Hat CodeReady Workspaces

Red Hat CodeReady Workspaces 2.4 provides an enterprise-level cloud developer workspace server and browser-based IDE. CodeReady Workspaces includes ready-to-use developer stacks for some of the most popular programming languages, frameworks, and Red Hat technologies.

This minor release of Red Hat CodeReady Workspaces is based on Eclipse Che 7.18.2 and offers a number of enhancements and new features, including:

  • Support for IBM Z
  • Improvements to workspace start and overall performance
  • Bug fixes

  • Languages updates

    • Golang switched to the upstream plug-in published by Golang (not Microsoft), and was updated to the latest version of 0.16.1.

CodeReady Workspaces 2.4 is available in the Red Hat Container Catalog. Install it on OpenShift Container Platform, starting at version 3.11, by following the instructions in the Installing CodeReady Workspaces chapter of the Installation Guide.

CodeReady Workspaces 2.4 is available from the OperatorHub in OpenShift 4.4 and beyond. CodeReady Workspaces 2.4 is based on a new Operator that uses the Operator Lifecycle Manager. This makes the CodeReady Workspaces installation flow simpler and doable without leaving the OpenShift Console.​

To install CodeReady Workspaces for OpenShift 4.4 or later, get CodeReady Workspaces from the OperatorHub and follow the Installing CodeReady Workspaces on OpenShift 4 from OperatorHub chapter of the Installation Guide.

1.2. Notable enhancements

1.2.1. Support for IBM Z

CodeReady Workspaces can now be deployed as an operator on OpenShift running on IBM Z mainframe systems using OperatorHub.

CodeReady Workspaces on IBM Z does not support:

  • The following devfiles:

    • Fuse
    • EAP for openjdk8
    • .Net
  • The following installation targets:

    • OpenShift Container Platform 3.11
    • OpenShift Container Platform 4.5
    • OpenShift Dedicated 4.3
  • An installation in restricted environments

1.2.2. Support certificates from OpenShift-trusted CA bundle

When OpenShift is configured with trusted CA certificates, CodeReady Workspaces will automatically process all those certificates, along with the ones explicitly assigned to it.

1.2.3. Configure with custom hostname

The configuration property cheHost in CheCluster Custom Resource can be set with a custom hostname value and secure route to it. This value will be used for all communication to the CodeReady Workspaces server. The Custom Resource has to be configured with a Trusted certificate for the custom hostname value.

1.3. Other enhancements

1.3.1. Git credential storage mechanism

The secret injection mechanism able to inject a file with the username and password and set the git config credential.helper was added. This allows users to use Git with HTTPS protocol without prompting for credential at every connection establishing and at every workspace start.

1.3.2. Switch or Stop workspaces from the IDE

The IDE now provides the ability to stop a running workspace or switch to a different workspace while keeping the current workspace active.

  • A workspace can be stopped using File → Close Workspace. User will then be redirected to the Dashboard.
  • File → Open Workspace lists all accessible Workspaces into which a user can switch.

1.3.3. Support for .devfile.yaml name

The source project folder can include a devfile with .<devfile>.yaml or <devfile>.yaml file names. CodeReady Workspaces automatically searches for .devfile.yaml if devfile.yaml is not found.