Administration

These guides contain information on managing the Coder control plane and authoring templates.

First time viewers looking to set up control plane access can start with the configuration guide. If you're a team lead looking to design environments for your developers, check out our templates guides. If you are a developer using Coder, we recommend the user guides.

For automation and scripting workflows, see our CLI and API docs.

For any information not strictly contained in these sections, check out our Tutorials and FAQs.

What is an image, template, dev container, or workspace

Image

• A base image contains OS-level packages and utilities that the Coder workspace is built on. It can be an example image, custom image in your registry, or one from Docker Hub. It is defined in each template.
• Managed by: Externally to Coder.

Template

• Templates include infrastructure-level dependencies for the workspace. For example, a template can include Kubernetes PersistentVolumeClaims, Docker containers, or EC2 VMs.
• Managed by: Template administrators from within the Coder deployment.

Startup scripts

• Agent startup scripts apply to all users of a template. This is an intentionally flexible area that template authors have at their disposal to manage the "last mile" of workspace creation.
• Managed by: Coder template administrators.

Workspace

• A workspace is the environment that a developer works in. Developers on a team each work from their own workspace and can use multiple IDEs.
• Managed by: Developers

Development containers (dev containers)

• A Development Container is an open-source specification for defining development environments (called dev containers). It is generally stored in VCS alongside associated source code. It can reference an existing base image, or a custom Dockerfile that will be built on-demand.
• Managed by: Dev Teams

Dotfiles / personalization

• Users may have their own specific preferences relating to shell prompt, custom keybindings, color schemes, and more. Users can leverage Coder's dotfiles support or create their own script to personalize their workspace. Be aware that users with root permissions in their workspace can override almost all of the previous configuration.
• Managed by: Individual Users