Release Recap: Measure Workspace Build Times in 2.17.0, New KasmVNC Module, and Other Updates
Today’s newest mainline release is 2.17.0; check out what’s included below. At the time of this writing, our latest stable release is 2.16.1. For more details about the features in 2.16.x, such as experimental notifications, see last month’s release post.
We're excited to roll out Coder 2.17.0, making it easier than ever to monitor and improve build times and streamline access to desktop tools. Track workspace build times down to the millisecond, gain clear visibility into provisioning jobs, and instantly connect to remote desktops with KasmVNC–all designed to help your team work faster and smarter. Dive into the new features below, and check out the full changelog on GitHub for more details.
Measure Workspace Build Times from Request to Ready
Now available via the Dashboard and API, access step-wise breakdowns of workspace provisioning and agent startup times to understand what’s slowing down your builds. Diagnose delays caused by infrastructure, optimize template startup scripts, and make workspaces ready faster, empowering your teams to start coding with minimal downtime.
For developers and data engineers, time matters—whether you’re switching branches, reviewing pull requests, or onboarding new team members. This feature is a stepping stone toward our broader initiative: pre-built workspaces that give developers near-instant startup time. While pre-builds are still in the early stages of development, you can leave feedback and stay updated on our progress in the GitHub issue. For accessing workspace build times in the UI and CLI, check out our workspace lifecycle documentation.
Need help speeding up your Coder templates and workspaces? Check out our guide for best practices to achieve faster workspace startup times.
Introducing the KasmVNC Module: A Modern, Secure Web-Based Linux Desktop Experience
For developers working with desktop environments, KasmVNC provides instant, secure access to remote desktops directly from any web browser—no VNC client needed. KasmVNC is a modern, open source VNC server and client that runs securely behind the Coder application proxy. Whether running a desktop application such as Postman or previewing work in real time, KasmVNC delivers a high-performance experience with advanced security, multi-threaded encoding, and smooth clipboard integration.
Designed with developers in mind, KasmVNC’s YAML-based configurations and containerized images make setup and customization easy, seamlessly fitting into modern DevOps workflows and enterprise setups.
Visit the Coder Registry to learn how to add the KasmVNC module to your templates.
Other Updates & What’s Next
Registry Stability Updates
We recently rolled out updates to enhance the stability of the Coder Registry by extending cache intervals between GitHub and the user-facing download interface, along with improved monitoring. If you encounter any disruptions with the Coder Registry, please let us know.
Security Update: Key rotation
We’ve implemented a new key rotation system to improve our security posture on a few authentication payloads that previously leveraged pre-shared keys, mainly for signing JWTs for various flows such as authenticating access to a workspace app. Prior to this there was not a straightforward way to rotate these keys. It’s possible during the upgrade process that some users could encounter some one-off errors if they’re in the middle of these authentication flows. The window for these errors is quite small and only exists during the rollout of the upgrade. Retrying should fix any issues encountered. The two flows affected are authenticating access to a workspace app and converting a built-in user to OIDC.
For those who wish to minimize any opportunity for disruption during these flows, we advise rolling out the upgrade during a period of low usage.
Bug Fixes
As always, we release bug fixes and patches throughout the month to ensure Coder continues to run smoothly. Check out our Coder releases on GitHub for full details on the latest patches. Found a bug? Tag it here to let us know!
That concludes this month’s Release Recap. We can’t wait for you to try out our new features!
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