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Run VSCode and terminal on any iOS device
- harleyli 2y agoOkay. I feel like the generative power of the iPad has improved again.
- lxgr 2y agoIt's a clever scheme, really: Ship a device that is technically more powerful than many laptops, but artificially limit the OS's capabilities in pretty drastic ways, then lift the limitations bit by bit. Is there a name for the inverse of boiling the frog?
- dvgz0 2y agoYes, it's called "Defrosting the Penguin." Slowly thawing out that Linux potential!
- emericaonline 2y agoJust bought an iPad today and I’m excited to try this out.
- nasretdinov 2y agoBlink is also a mosh client, so IMO the combo makes it the best iOS app for a dev/ops :)
- theshrike79 2y agoMosh is an essential requirement for any kind of mobile work over ssh, combine it with tmux and iTerm2 tmux integration and you can work on a remote server without even knowing it :D
- codetrotter 2y agoAnother alternative is running ssh over Wireguard. It gives you some of the same benefits, like roaming between different internet connections while transparently maintaining connections that are going through the Wireguard VPN connection. https://www.wireguard.com/ https://www.wireguard.com/ I used to use mosh, but the lack of support for scrollback in mosh eventually made me give up on it. https://github.com/mobile-shell/mosh/issues/122 https://github.com/mobile-shell/mosh/issues/122 I’ve been happy running ssh over Wireguard instead. Not just as a replacement for mosh but also because I wanted my own VPN in the first place. I use the VPN for connections between my own computers. I don’t bother routing traffic for the wider internet through my VPN although Wireguard can do that too if you want.
- lxgr 2y agoDoesn't that ruin standby battery life and/or fail when traveling between Wi-Fi networks due to TCP or SSH timeouts?
- deeth_starr_v 2y agoI haven’t seen that. My session persists with Tailscale when I’m roaming on my iPhone hotspot to the next day when I am on home WiFi. Only lost a few % overnight on my M1.
- mbirth 2y agoIf you’re using tmux, mosh doesn’t bring much to the table compared to plain SSH. Tmux will keep everything running and you can easily reattach to that session after a reconnect. Apps like ShellFish even do this completely transparently so you don’t even notice you got disconnected for a second. No need for mosh there.
- palad1n 2y agoI want to believe! Anyone tried this yet?
- devjab 2y agoI haven’t tried it but their approach seems very promising. VS code has some excellent support for working on remote code, and if they somehow manage to make that bridge with an iPad that will be a game changer of sorts for iPad development. It will of course require you to have an environment to actually run your “cloud” vs code. So it’s still different from developing on a Mac, especially if you want to utilise containers as your default way to run your code “locally”. Which I’m not sure things like GitHub code spaces support.
- rcarmo 2y agoI use it regularly (from the very beginning) and it works great, except that the VS Code instance is a “web” one, and as such quite restricted in terms of what extensions it can run. You also need to install a (free) file system extension for it to actually access any files (local or remote). The terminal by itself is pretty great, and supports SSH agent forwarding (a key thing for me, that sadly mosh doesn’t handle well).
- sixonesixo 2y agoi'm using it for a while now, i just ssh to my kubernetes development pod and i do everything from there, i have also a code-server instance installed on the pod so i can use vscode as if i was on that machine. blink was really a gamechanger for me as it fits all my needs! but i think i have a job that's the best use case for blink 'cause i'm a backend dev working exclusively on cloud. the only think i don't like is that i cannot scale vscode UI inside blink
- watermelon0 2y agoEvery time I see something like this, I'm a bit sad, that we live in a world where tablets (especially iPad M4) have comparable performance to most laptops, but we still cannot run a general purpose OS (macOS/Linux/Windows) on them. Tablets are surely capable of running VSCode, Docker, VMs, etc. locally, and from UX standpoint, VSCode is basically Chromium, so experience would be the same if these tools ran directly on device.
- infotainment 2y agoAgreed; Apple’s restrictions on the iPad should be illegal, IMO. It’s ridiculous how crippled they are, and all in the name of making sure people feel compelled to also buy a laptop.
- theshrike79 2y agoI agree, but we should also make restrictions on smart TVs and gaming consoles illegal too. Both the Xbox and PS5 are 100% commodity hardware, not being able to run our own software on it is a really weird limitation. One that people even on HN have accepted while simultaneously ragging on Apple's "walled garden".
- pjmlp 2y agoActually that is not the case with XBox, you can have your own applications there without rooting it. https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/xbox-apps/devkit-activation https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/uwp/xbox-apps/devk...
- codetrotter 2y agoBut can you use the Xbox itself to locally develop and run your own software? Or do you still need to use another computer or an online service via web browser?
- ach9l 2y agoAnd you can say "Actually that is not the case with iPad, you can have your own applications there without rooting it." have you heard of Xcode? still... you are missing the point, you can't even use an iPad to properly code for iPad
- FredPret 2y agoBlink doesn't have a lifetime license, which prevents me getting it. I just don't like working with rented tools. There's an excellent app called iSH which runs Alpine Linux on iOS. I wish it were possible to boot into iSH on the iPad
- theshrike79 2y agoIt's also 100% open source and GPLv3 Licensed: https://github.com/blinksh/blink https://github.com/blinksh/blink You can just clone the repo, build it yourself and use it 100% free as in beer and speech.
- eptcyka 2y agoDue to the way apple restricts development on their platform, one has to recompile/reinstall homebrew software every 7 days for it to work, effectively killing FOSS development for people who don't own the bundle/app IDs. I once paid a 100$ to try and contribute support for NFC for an open source app, only to not be able to use my functionality without upstreaming it. Judging from this experience alone, it feels like Apple hates FOSS.
- WesolyKubeczek 2y agoApple doesn’t precisely hate FOSS, but it loves its income sources and the sweet revenue coming from them. Obviously it will protect them, duh.
- eptcyka 2y agoYes, but for this reason alone I believe there is far less FOSS software on iOS.
- mynameisvlad 2y agoThe point isn’t that it’s easy to do but that it’s fully doable for someone that doesn’t want to contribute the $20/year to development of the software.
- nottorp 2y agoWhat does this do in plain english? It seems to either run vscode in a browser tab on ios or start an instance on a desktop that edits files on ios or run something in a 'cloud'... I suppose it makes sense at a first glance if you know what all the other stuff referred to in the article is, but otherwise ... not really.
- theshrike79 2y agoBlink.sh is a terminal/ssh client for iOS They have integrated VSCode APIs so that you can run VSCode web locally while editing files either on the iPad filesystem or on a remote server. You can get a similar experience by running a web version of VSCode, like with Github Codespaces or Amazon's similar offering, but this can be run 100% locally if you want to.
- nottorp 2y agoThanks! Another 300 years and ipads will be usable as developer systems :) In the mean time, I think I'll keep my mbpro around...
- 1oooqooq 2y agonow that apple have to allow other sources for software, what is preventing Mozilla, chrome, vscode from actually running in ios?
- stetrain 2y agoIf you're in the EU that should be possible, although the software is still limited to using Apple's public approved APIs since Apple still has a security notarization process software can be installed from third-party sources.
- blep-arsh 2y agoIf I remember correctly: iOS is preventing apps from running any generated code that's not signed ahead of time (it's allowed for browsers specifically for JIT but not for IDEs, I believe); spawning processes and loading new dylibs is also forbidden so it's still very inconvenient.
- AJRF 2y agoHate to be that guy, but Samsung DeX is a much closer vision to a "Mobile device that doubles as a usable computer" than an iPad has proven to be since it launched 14 years ago. Especially if you get one of the Z Fold devices. It's a phone, a small tablet and a pluggable computer - all in one. Has had great terminal support for the past decade through Termux and can even run Emacs!
- theshrike79 2y ago> Especially if you get one of the Z Fold devices. It's a phone, a small tablet and a pluggable computer - all in one. It also costs as much as a phone, small tablet and a pluggable computer...
- pquki4 2y agoI tried the Termux -> Ubuntu -> code-server approach to get vscode running locally on a Galaxy Tab tablet. Since it is a somewhat "real" Ubuntu installation, it is as close as it gets, runs your debugger and compiler and doesn't have many of the limitations found in other terminals (e.g. go compiler does not run on iSH). But I don't travel much and still prefer laptops with large screens. I do think many people will benefit from this approach. Too sad there are very Samsung tablets around. (As a side note: I have Samsung Galaxy Tab S7+ and an iPad Pro 12.9, and use the galaxy tab way more than iPad for browsing and watching YouTube videos. The screen is gorgeous and speakers are great, and I rarely find something that iPad has but not on Samsung.)
- dlivingston 2y agoDo people use DeX as an all-in-one (esp. for development)? I played with it for a bit on my wife's phone and it seemed very cool, but I couldn't tell how useful it would be as a daily driver.
- rubslopes 2y agoI've seen Youtube videos where a dev take his phone, a keyboard and a portable monitor to a café. While my nerd self love the idea, I also think that if you're carrying a monitor and a keyboard you might as well carry a M1 Macbook Air.
- throw5345346 2y agoBlink is a valiant effort -- serious, quality work, that makes an enormous difference to people who need to do ad hoc work from a tablet... ... and really shouldn't be needed. (It's not the only useful tool on the iPad -- I adore the rather idiosyncratic GoCoEdit -- but I am a VSC-Remote person now)
- Euphorbium 2y agoWhat is the actual price?
- als0 2y ago$20 a year https://blink.sh/#choose-package https://blink.sh/#choose-package
- moondev 2y agoWhen you work locally with this, what happens when you open a terminal from vscode? Or is it disabled like in https://vscode.dev https://vscode.dev
- EtienneK 2y agoAh, the iPad Pro: One of the most compact and powerful computing devices of all time. But trying to use even a small fraction of that power requires workarounds like this. I bought into the idea of the iPad Pro as a coding device 4 years ago; only to have been left very disappointed. And it seems nothing has really changed (although the M series iPads do at least support full screen external monitors now - mine still has black bars). I won't consider an iPad Pro until I can actually use it as a development laptop replacement. I still see use for the non-pro iPads in my life; but not the Pro.
- pjmlp 2y agoPro isn't a synonym for Programming.
- irusensei 2y agoHow does Blink compares to a-shell or iSh?
- miohtama 2y agoRelated: I tried to use Github Codespaces (Visual Studio in cloud) on iPad with a keyboard, using a browser. It works very well, in theory. There is only a slight deal breaker bug. Safari does not properly support clipboard. So copy-paste does not work. It should be very simple to fix as Chrome, Firefox, do on desktop if Safari would care more about web standards. Also you cannot install any other browser in iPad that would have the required support to use copy-paste.
- panzerboiler 2y agoCan you describe the issue with copy/pasting in Safari? What is not supported exactly?
- miohtama 2y ago- Terminal copy-paste - File tree copy-paste Other issues include - Scrolling Jupyter notebooks It does not help to install as a Progressive Web App, as bugs are still present.
- reactordev 2y agoI just tested copy-paste in terminal and file tree, on an iPad, using Github Code spaces, in safari, and it worked fine.
- gedy 2y agoUsually these complainer types have some eccentric setup, e.g. custom keyboard app, content blockers, etc going on then blame the browser.
- panzerboiler 2y agoI am not interested in the issues you have with those webapps. I am asking what are the bugs of Safari's implementation of the Clipboard API, since in my experience there are none (except maybe https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=222262 https://bugs.webkit.org/show_bug.cgi?id=222262 if you want to consider it a bug and not a different interpretation of the specs).
- arytoriop 2y agoGoing to try this out on my iPad. I can't think of many times you would need to tho tbh.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- plutoh28 2y agoBeen using this for a while on my 2018 iPad Pro for college. I just SSH into my pc at home and am able to work on all my assignments with neovim. Works well enough to save me from having to buy a laptop since I was able to get this iPad for ~$300 locally on Facebook marketplace. Would recommend to non-power users on a budget (e.g. college students)
- ein0p 2y agoWhy do people like to suffer? Just get a used Lenovo Carbon that’s a few years old, plop Ubuntu on it and do all of that with a proper computer with a larger screen, good keyboard, and no “tricks” whatsoever. And if the internet connection conks out, you can still do whatever you need to do
- mbonnet 2y agoYou're fundamentally misunderstanding the use case. Using an iPad Pro with a small keyboard is a small form factor, often doesn't add to the load in a student's backpack (most of them have iPads for note taking anyway), etc
- ein0p 2y agoI specifically mentioned X1 Carbon because it is very light. Not a problem to carry at all, unlike eg a MacBook.
- chipotle_coyote 2y agoThey're not comparing it to a MacBook, though, they're comparing it to an iPad Pro. We could go through the whole dance of figuring out which weighs more and what does what with whom and where, but I think it's probably easier to say "different people have different priorities". If what you want is a lightweight Linux laptop, the iPad is never going to give that to you. If what you want is a tablet that you can connect a keyboard to when you want, an X1 Carbon is never going to give you that. And if that is what you want, it's nice that the iPad can run a great ssh/mosh client that's capable of running Visual Studio Code in the cloud.
- dieselgate 2y agoI use both iSh and iVim on my iPhone 8 and they both work well. Would not be interested in vscode on a mobile device but vi/vim work well. Have been casually trying to figure out/install ssh on iSh recently but it’s not configured out of the box and low priority. iVim and repl.it apps have the best mobile keyboard configuration I’ve used - have lost interest in replit since they were pushing ai so much though. Ultimately coding on a mobile device is just a toy and I just use a computer for real things
- kylehotchkiss 2y agoHow viable is this for getting a day of work done, against projects hosted on Github?
- ahasani 2y agoI previously used a raspberry pi as a development companion to my ipad, now it's an Android phone. Full linux distro (via termux proot along with its limitations) to edit compile run on the go for js/python/java/c/c++/rust. Yes you read right, best development companion device on an Ipad is an Android phone at least for me. Me carry no laptop no more :D
- hedora 2y agoThe documentation suggests this works with VS Code remote mode over SSH. Does anyone use that for their daily driver? (On my Mac, I only use firefox, slack, terminal, vs code in remote mode, and a few built-in Apple apps that ship on iOS and MacOS, so this could close half the software gap between a mac and and iPad device for me. Now, if only apple shipped a keyboard that wasn’t missing buttons, and had a haptic trackpad…).