GitHub Codespaces Troubleshooting

This repository is meant to provide a minimal example for troubleshooting issues when trying to use GitHub Codespaces.

This repository was created to support the bug-report and discussion here.

Briefly, Codespaces successfully builds a codespace if the devcontainer.json instructs to build from a Dockerfile. However, if the devcontainer.json instructs to use a docker-compose.yml, Codespaces will not build even if that docker-compose.yml file is using the same exact Dockerfile.

Branches

• main: This branch contains a minimal example of a Codespaces configuration that works (i.e., does not use docker-compose.yml).
• broken: This branch contains a minimal example of a Codespaces configuration that does not work (i.e., uses docker-compose.yml).
• fixed: This branch fixed the issue by updating the version specified in docker-compose.yml as tipped by the GitHub codespaces team here

Steps to reproduce

Before doing any of the steps below, clone this repository.

Verifying main branch works

Locally

1. On the main branch, open a VS Code Remote Containers session.
2. From a terminal in the VS Code Remote Containers session, run Rscript hello.R

In GitHub Codespaces

1. On the main branch, open the repository in GitHub Codespaces in a browser.
2. From the terminal in the browser session, run Rscript hello.R

Verifying broken branch works locally

Locally with VS Code Remote Containers

1. On the broken branch, open a VS Code Remote Containers session.
2. From a terminal in the VS Code Remote Containers session, run Rscript hello.R

Locally with Docker

1. After having built the image locally in the previous steps, from any terminal session run docker run --rm -i gh_codespace_troubleshooting-app

Verifying broken branch does not work in GitHub Codespaces

1. On the broken branch, open the repository in GitHub Codespaces in a browser.
2. Observe that the Codespace is not created, and a recovery container is created instead.
3. Retrieve the logs from the Codespace-creation process:

Failed to create container.
Error: Command failed: docker-compose -f /var/lib/docker/codespacemount/workspace/gh_codespace_troubleshooting/docker-compose.yml -f /var/lib/docker/codespacemount/.persistedshare/docker-compose.codespaces.yml config
Error Code: 1302
Container creation failed.