Add VM and Cloud Environment Support to Dev Home

[hamza-usmani]

Suggested new feature or improvement

Today, developers are connecting to local or remote environments (such as local or remote VMs, cloud VMs, containers and more) using a number of different RDP connection tools and web portals, while also various 3rd party software and scripts to automate setup and creation. Here, we will refer to these as environments, as they are all various developer machines that only differ in where they run or are intended to be used for.

Developers are moving their environments to the cloud for convenience, repeatability, security and performance, while also fighting the toil of jumping between different web portals, connection software and setup or configuration tools.

We want to bring the ability to quickly perform all of the following actions on any environment, such as VMs and cloud environments simply via Dev Home:

• Create (and configure with apps, packages and repositories)
• Manage
• Launch
• Share or Copy

Scenario

As a developer using [any environment type], I want to setup a new environment, launch into it, and then create a [a different environment type] with the same configuration.

• User wants to create a new [any environment type]
• User wants to configure the environment with their specific apps, packages and repositories
• User wants to launch the environment (and pin it to the start menu or taskbar to quickly re-launch)
• User wants to create a [different environment type] with the same apps, packages and repositories

Users can create new environments, such as a cloud Dev Box in this example below, and configure the environment with apps, packages and repositories (powered by WinGet) in a seamless UI. At the end of the creation experience, Dev Home will create the environment for the user, while also providing the option to export (save/share) the WinGet configuration file with the apps, packages and repositories provisioned on the environment. See #2160 for more details on the export configuration feature.

Users can quickly view the state of their environments, perform key actions, and quickly launch into the environment from Dev Home. Some examples of key actions are the ability to pin an environment to the Windows Start menu or Taskbar, to quickly launch/re-launch a specific environment.

Dev Home will get the user directly into their environment, and in the example below, the user is remotely connecting to a cloud Dev Box.

Additional details

Dev Home will build on an "environment extension interface”, where environment providers can register in Dev Home as supported environment types. We will natively support Hyper-V VMs, Microsoft Dev Boxes, and other 1st party providers, but any environment provider can create a Dev Home environment extension to register as a supported environment type!

Feature requests that are relevant to this feature:

• Integration with Microsoft Dev Box #955
• It is recommended to provide entry buttons for development environments for other platforms #1701