How to run a static site on Codespaces

[3kh0]

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I am pretty new to codespaces, so I have a repo that just uses GitHub pages, and I want to use codespaces as a preview because I am come from Replit (Replit editor is dog water) so I want to see how I can do this with code spaces, should I run a Apache web server or something?

[cmuto09]

Hey @3kh0! Excited that you are trying out Codespaces.

If you have static files, you'll need a way to serve them out of the Codespace. An Apache web server would do the trick, or any other server technology you'd like to use. You can install the server technology you want to use in your codespace's dev container configuration.

Once you have the static files served up, you can use port forwarding to make these pages available to your localhost, or even across the public web.

[3kh0]

@cmuto09 Thank you so much for this! I figured out how to make the dev container configuration, what should I do? I don't know which config I should use. Can you suggest some or provide a example of it?

[cmuto09]

@3kh0 I threw together a super quick repo to show the basic principles at work. I'm less well versed in apache than I am in the Node.js ecosystem, so I decided to use a simple server off of npm rather than Apache, but the principles should remain the same:

• Use your .devcontainer.json and the associated Dockerfile to configure your Codespace environment and install Apache (or any other server)
• Use the Dockerfile or Dev Container lifecycle scripts to configure and serve your docs
• Use port forwarding to enable previews of your served content via a browser

Does that help?

[3kh0]

@cmuto09 Thank you for this, but when I try it does not work.

Here is my repo: https://github.com/3kh0/3kh0.github.io

See if you can do something with that.

[cmuto09]

Looking at your repo, it should work if you copy the following files from my repo to into yours:

• .devcontainer/*
• yarn.lock
• package.json (with the appropriate edits to point to you and your repository)

If you bring those over, then rebuild your codespace, I believe it should work

[cmuto09]

Another (simpler) approach would be to use the Live Server extension for VS Code.

This would achieve the same goal as above, and wouldn't require you to add any yarn/apache or any other configs to your repo!

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