Guide: Launching `code-server` on railway.app

Railway is a new cloud development platform! ☁️

Use Railway + code-server to get a dev environment that you can access from any device.

Step 1: Click button to deploy

Step 2: Configure & launch your environment

You'll need to make a new repository which will contain your code-server configuration. If you push changes to this repo (to install NodeJS, for example), it will re-deploy code-server.

You also need to specity a PASSWORD and a GIT_REPO to clone in your environment :)

Step 3: Modify your environment to add additional tools

In Railway, go to Deployments -> Triggers to see your source repo.
Open the source repo in GitHub and edit the Dockerfile

Add some custom tools (like NodeJS) and push to the main branch:

# You can add custom software and dependencies for your environment here. Some examples:

# RUN code-server --install-extension esbenp.prettier-vscode
# RUN sudo apt-get install -y build-essential
# RUN COPY myTool /home/coder/myTool

# Install NodeJS
RUN sudo curl -fsSL https://deb.nodesource.com/setup_15.x | sudo bash -
RUN sudo apt-get install -y nodejs

Head back to Railway and notice a new deployment was created. After it has completed, you can use these tools in your environment.
(Optional): Configure rclone so that you can save your VS Code config and files without commiting

See the deploy-container README for other config vars for your environment.

To update your code-server version, modify the version number on line 2 in your Dockerfile. See the list of tags for the latest version.