A customized code-server deployment template for Railway, featuring a rapid build time with an extensible and programmable set of parameters to fine-tune your environment exactly how you want it (e.g. specify applications, runtimes, vscode extensions).

• VS Code Anywhere: Spin up a remote code environment and access from anywhere
• Application Installation: Easily install common development tools
• VS Code Extension Support: Pre-install your favorite extensions
• Git Repository Integration: Clone your project automatically on startup

1. Click the button below to deploy to Railway:

   

2. Configure your deployment with environment variables (see below)

3. Wait for the build to complete

4. Access your code-server from the URL provided by Railway

Configure your environment using the following variables:

You can install the following applications using the INSTALL_APPS variable:

• node - Node.js and NPM
• bun - Bun JavaScript runtime
• go - Go programming language
• rust - Rust programming language
• java - Java Development Kit
• python - Python 3 with pip and venv
• zig - Zig programming language

• Docker
• Go (for working on the status server)
• Make

This project includes a comprehensive Makefile that simplifies development and building tasks. Here are the main commands:

# Set up Go modules and dependencies
make deps

# Build the Go status server for your current platform
make build

# Build the Go status server specifically for Linux
make linux

# Clean build artifacts
make clean

# Build and tag the Docker image
make docker

# Build the Docker image with a custom tag
make docker TAG=my-custom-tag

# Run the Docker container locally
make run

# Run with custom environment variables
make run PASSWORD=mysecret GIT_REPO=https://github.com/myuser/myrepo.git

# Rebuild everything (Go binary and Docker image)
make all

If you prefer not to use Make, you can manually build:

# Build the Go status server
cd deploy-container/server
go mod init status-server # If not already initialized
go get github.com/gorilla/websocket
go mod tidy
go build -o bin/status-server main.go

# Build the Docker image
docker build -t code-server-railway .

# Run the container
docker run -p 8080:8080 -e PASSWORD=your_password code-server-railway

This project enhances the standard code-server Docker image with:

1. A Go-based WebSocket server that provides real-time status updates
2. A custom loading page that displays initialization progress
3. A customized entrypoint script that handles:
   • Repository cloning
   • Application installation
   • VS Code extension installation
   • Dotfiles setup
   • Seamless transition to code-server

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

You can add additional dependencies in the Dockerfile:

# Install a VS Code extension
RUN code-server --install-extension esbenp.prettier-vscode

# Install apt packages
RUN sudo apt-get install -y your-package-name

# Copy custom files
COPY your-file /home/coder/your-file

Contributions are welcome! Feel free to open issues or submit pull requests.

This repository is designed to be deployed on Railway. Simply connect your repository to Railway and it will automatically build and deploy your code-server instance.

Important: Make sure to precompile the Go status server binary before pushing changes. The binary is shipped with the repository to speed up the deployment process.

MIT License

coder/deploy-code-server - creating the code-server product and the initial railway build logic.