I recently started using Forgejo for managing my personal projects (including this blog content). Prior to this, I was using self-hosted GitLab; maybe I’ll write a full post about this in the future, but basically I made the change because GitLab in Docker was a real memory hog and I much prefer open source solutions where available anyway. One thing I missed from GitLab (and GitHub) is the built-in web IDE for making changes without having to clone the project locally. I found Coder which provides a containerized VSCode PWA that I plan to use as an alternative to GitHub Codespaces and GitLab workspaces.

What is Code Server

Code Server is an open source container distribution of VSCodium. VSCodium is the open source release of VSCode (think Chromium and Google Chrome). I personally have more experience with PyCharm and other JetBrains IDEs, but VSCode is another popular option and I’ve been making the transition at work from PyCharm to VSCode after comparing the LLM integration between them. Long story short, VSCode is miles ahead of JetBrains IDEs for code writing and LLM context management, at least as of around March 2025 when I last compared them. Things are moving very quickly in this space, so it is hard to know how LLMs and IDE integrations compare from week to week.

I haven’t fully evaluated the differences between VSCode and Code Server yet, but in the context of a replacement for what I had with GitLab and GitHub I am initially satisfied with what I see in Code Server.

Deployment

Deployment is as simple as starting a Docker container. In addition to the documented setup process, I also mounted a directory with my SSH configuration and keys so that I can easily connect to GitHub and my private Forgejo via SSH.

I configured nginx ingress (for access from my LAN only). For most deployments its probably easier to just use IP addresses, but I like using nginx. This makes it a little easier to move deployments around since I just have to update Nginx to point at the appropriate IP address. I’ve included my site config below in case anyone reading this wants to achieve something similar. I don’t know that this configuration is optimal, but it is working.

server {
    listen 80;
    listen 443 ssl;
    server_name code.*;

    include /config/nginx/ssl.conf;
    add_header Front-End-Https on;


    location / {
        include /config/nginx/local_only.conf;
        include /config/nginx/resolver.conf;

        # Advanced Proxy Config
        send_timeout 5m;
        proxy_read_timeout 240;
        proxy_send_timeout 240;
        proxy_connect_timeout 240;

        # Basic Proxy Config
        proxy_set_header Host $host:$server_port;
        proxy_set_header X-Client-IP $http_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header X-Real-IP $remote_addr;
        #proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $proxy_add_x_forwarded_for;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Proto https;
        proxy_redirect  http://  $scheme://;
        proxy_http_version 1.1;
        proxy_set_header Upgrade $http_upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Connection upgrade;
        proxy_set_header Accept-Encoding gzip;
        proxy_cache_bypass $cookie_session;
        proxy_no_cache $cookie_session;
        proxy_buffers 32 4k;
        proxy_max_temp_file_size 2048m;

        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Host <coder domain name>;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-For $remote_addr;
        proxy_set_header X-Forwarded-Ssl on;
        proxy_pass http://coder:8080/;
    }
}

Initial Impressions

I wrote the bulk of this post about 2 months ago and I admittedly have not found myself using Code Server for anything other than this blog project. I have been using Copilot in VSCode more regularly in my day-to-day, and its lack of support in Code Server is probably a deal breaker for me. Even though I am unlikely to continue using Code Server, I may check out Coder as a method for exposing a different IDE via web browser.

Future Plans

As mentioned, I might check out Coder as a more complete reproducible workspace in lieu of Code Server. Alternatively, I might just run VSCode in a VM as a simpler solution, though I would miss having things like easy clipboard integration.

I have also started looking into Neovim for code management and might work that into my setup. I don’t expect to get any kind of LLM code assistant functionality in nvim, but it would be an easy way to have a single dev system that I can just connect to from whatever client I have available. I will probably dedicate my next post here to documenting my nvim configuration (along with some updates to my previously-documented shell customizations).