Problem statement

Currently developers must re-enter their Dotfiles URL every time they create a new workspace. Most developers are not using a diverse set of dotfile repositories, so this action becomes repetitive. To avoid tedious repetition, we can reduce the number of times Dotfiles URLs are repeated.

Implementation notes

Customers have suggested a few methods to allow users to store or cache their Dotfiles by account rather than by workspace.

Option 1 - User Storage

A straightforward system would allow users to store their dotfiles URL in the account settings. Then, the coder_parameter would be automatically filled with the account dotfiles URL, or simply be a boolean checkbox to “Clone Dotfile repository from account”.

Option 2 - Caching last used Dotfiles URL

The customer suggested that the Dotfiles parameter text could simply be pre-filled with the last repository entered for a given user. To extend this, the text field could also have a drop-down (possibly searchable) list of previously-entered Dotfile URLs sorted by usage. This list would be appended to with each new repository entered.

Option 3 - Generic user-wide parameters

To extend the capability of option 1, a generic user-wide parameter list could be created to store any variable currently used in coder_parameter's, similarly to how tokens are configured now. This functionality is better described here.

Impact

This is an annoyance for users that costs time during the creation of workspaces. For a more empirical measurement of impact, our Dotfiles module on the registry has over 2300 installs.