Dotfiles

Coder offers the coder dotfiles <repo> command which simplifies workspace personalization. Our behavior is consistent with Codespaces, so their documentation explains how it loads your repo.

You can read more on dotfiles best practices here.

Templates

Templates can prompt users for their dotfiles repo using the following pattern:

variable "dotfiles_uri" {
  description = <<-EOF
  Dotfiles repo URI (optional)

  see https://dotfiles.github.io
  EOF
    # The codercom/enterprise-* images are only built for amd64
  default = ""
}

resource "coder_agent" "main" {
  ...
  startup_script = var.dotfiles_uri != "" ? "coder dotfiles -y ${var.dotfiles_uri}" : null
}

Here's a complete example.

Persistent Home

Sometimes you want to support personalization without requiring dotfiles.

In such cases:

• Mount a persistent volume to the /home directory
• Set the startup_script to call a ~/personalize script that the user can edit

resource "coder_agent" "main" {
  ...
  startup_script = "/home/coder/personalize"
}

The user can even fill personalize with coder dotfiles <repo>, but those looking for a simpler approach can inline commands like so:

#!/bin/bash
sudo apt update
# Install some of my favorite tools every time my workspace boots
sudo apt install -y neovim fish cargo