Dev Spaces Overview

What is Red Hat OpenShift Dev Spaces?

Red Hat OpenShift Dev Spaces provides Cloud Development Environments (CDEs) — fully configured, containerized workspaces that run on OpenShift. Instead of spending time setting up a local development environment, developers get a browser-based VS Code or JetBrains IDE backed by a workspace pod with all the tools, runtimes, and dependencies they need.

Key benefits:

  • Consistency — Every developer works in the same environment, eliminating "works on my machine" issues

  • Speed — New team members can start coding in minutes, not days

  • Security — Source code stays on the cluster; nothing lives on developer laptops

  • Kubernetes-native — Workspaces are pods, so developers build and test in the same platform where their apps run

Architecture

Dev Spaces has a few core components:

Dev Spaces Operator

Manages the lifecycle of the platform. Installed from OperatorHub.

CheCluster Custom Resource

The single configuration object for the entire Dev Spaces deployment. Controls everything from resource limits to storage strategy to Git integration.

DevWorkspace Operator

Extends the OpenShift API to manage individual workspace pods. Installed automatically as a dependency.

User Dashboard

Web UI where developers create, start, stop, and manage their workspaces.

Gateway

A Traefik-based reverse proxy that handles authentication (via OpenShift OAuth) and routes traffic to workspace pods.

Plugin Registry

Serves IDE extensions. By default an embedded Open VSX registry with a limited set of extensions — you will want to point this at the public Open VSX registry.

Devfile Registry

Provides sample workspace definitions for the dashboard’s "getting started" experience.

Key Concepts

Devfile

A YAML file (typically devfile.yaml at the repo root) that declares the workspace environment: container image, resource limits, endpoints, commands, and volumes. Devfiles are versioned alongside application code.

Universal Developer Image (UDI)

A pre-built container image (quay.io/devfile/universal-developer-image:ubi9-latest) that includes common tools and runtimes (Java, Node.js, Python, Go, C/C++, etc.) plus Podman and Buildah. If a repository has no devfile, Dev Spaces uses UDI by default.

CheCluster CR

The primary configuration surface. Rather than editing multiple config files, you configure Dev Spaces by patching one CheCluster resource.

Workspace Namespace

Each user gets an auto-provisioned namespace (<username>-devspaces) where their workspace pods run.

Next Steps

Proceed to Devfiles & Base Images.