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 2.6 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.
  • For best performance, use block storage for Persistent Volumes used with CodeReady Workspaces.
  • The name of the default CodeReady Workspaces namespace is openshift-workspaces. A user who wishes to use the previous name for the default namespace, workspaces, needs to note that documentation was updated to reflect the current state.

1.1. About Red Hat CodeReady Workspaces

Red Hat CodeReady Workspaces 2.6 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 7.24 and offers a number of enhancements and new features, including:

CodeReady Workspaces 2.6 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 on OpenShift Container Platform 3.11 chapter of the Installation Guide.

CodeReady Workspaces 2.6 is available from the OperatorHub in OpenShift 4.6 and beyond. CodeReady Workspaces 2.6 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 4.6 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 the CodeReady Workspaces crwctl installation method

The use of crwctl is now fully supported for all OCP 4.6 instances and acts as another installation option for CodeReady Workspaces. The crwctl provides a command-line tool alternative to the Operator Lifecycle Manager (OLM) UI.

Basic commands:

  • crwctl server:deploy
  • crwctl server:delete

1.2.2. Initial support of the factory flow with Bitbucket

Supporting the factory flow with Bitbucket provides the use of private and public Git repositories hosted on a Bitbucket server by manually adding personal access tokens to users' projects. The use of these tokens is to sign Bitbucket REST API calls and perform operations in Git repositories.

1.2.3. Usage of cluster internal service hostname for inter-component communication

By default, new CodeReady Workspaces deployments use a cluster internal service hostname for communication between CodeReady Workspaces server, Red Hat Single Sign-On, and registry components.

This improvement helps with bypassing proxy, certificates, and firewalls issues.

To enable this feature in the updated CodeReady Workspaces instance installed in the previous version, edit the Custom Resource (CR): 

$ oc patch checluster codeready-workspaces -n openshift-workspaces --type=json -p \
'[{"op": "replace", "path": "/spec/server/useInternalClusterSVCNames", "value": true}]'

OpenShift restrictions:

  • This feature does not support multi-cluster OpenShift environments.
  • The OpenShift environment restricts communication between namespaces.

1.2.4. Ability to mount Secrets into CodeReady Workspaces containers using annotations

An administrator can now annotate custom Secrets deployment to mount them into the CodeReady Workspaces Pods. Mounting a specific secret into Red Hat Single Sign-On containers helps to configure user authentication with Kerberos credentials.

1.2.5. Added support for JBoss EAP Extension Pack 2.0 Bootable JAR

This extension provides CodeReady Workspaces with a possibility to package your application as a bootable JAR or as a hollow bootable JAR in JBoss EAP XP 2.0.0. using the recently added devfile. A bootable JAR contains a server, a packaged application, and the runtime required to launch the server.

  • A second devfile for the new Bootable JAR feature was added in EAP XP 2. This devfile is available for all CodeReady Workspaces architectures. See CRW-1419
  • The existing XP devfiles on IBM Z and IBM Power Systems architectures still use XP1.

For details, see the JBoss EAP Extension Pack 2.0 Release Notes document.

1.2.6. Added support for EsLint

The vscode-eslint extension is now installable from the plug-in registry. It acts as a support for a use of JavaScript in the IDE, where it helps as a statically analyzing and automatic fixing tool.

1.2.7. VS Code GitHub Pull Request plug-in added to Plugin Registry

VS Code GitHub Pull Request plug-in is now included in CodeReady Workspaces and provides the ability to:

  • Authenticate and connect CodeReady Workspaces to GitHub.
  • Review and manage pull requests.
  • List and browse PRs from within CodeReady Workspaces.
  • Interact with PRs in-editor, including in-editor commenting with Markdown support.
  • Use the terminal integration in which CodeReady Workspaces UI and command-line tools, such as Git, can co-exist.

1.3. Other enhancements

1.3.1. Support for fractional values of cores needed to run devfiles

Users can now specify fractional values for CPU Request and Limit fields when configuring devfiles.

  • Valid values: 11, 1, 1.1, 0.1, 0.01, 1m, 100m, 1000m
  • Invalid values: 1.1.1, 1.1m, 0m, 1k

1.4. Support terminations and deprecations

  1. The following elements have been replaced or removed from CodeReady Workspaces 2.6.

    • The crwctl server:start command has been replaced with crwctl server:deploy.
    • The Red Hat Fuse devfile has been removed for CodeReady Workspaces running on IBM Z & P as Red Hat Fuse is not supported on those architectures.