Remote VS Code

Introduction

Setup

Prerequisites

• This setup requires you to have a remote UNIX server. I have tested this using an AWS EC2 instance, but it will work with similar solutions from other cloud vendors too.

• Your remote server should have enabled access from your IP. In case of AWS, you can do this in the following way:
• Go to your AWS console and open the EC2 service.
• Select the instance that you want to run VSCode on.
• In the details pane below, look at the inbound and outbound rules for this instance.
• If it has been allowed access from everywhere, better delete that rule for security.
• Go to the security group added to this instance and edit the inbound rules.
• Add a new rule and select type as HTTPS and IP as My IP from the dropdown menu
• Do this again for HTTP.
• save this setting, and now this instance can only be accessed from your IP.

Bash script for automated setup

• Now that we have ensured access to our server, we need to install code-server to our server.

• Make sure that you are able to SSH to your instance.

• Now, simply download the script below to your instance and run it.

About the script

• Downloads the specified version of code-server on the instance

• Sets up secure connection for this server

Configuring the script

• In case a newer version of code-server is released and you want to use that, you can change the version inside the script by changing the CODE_SERVER_VERSION variable.

• For running this script on a macOS server, change the CODE_SERVER_ARCH variable

Running the server

sudo ./code-server -p 80 --cert=~/certs/MyCertificate.crt --cert-key=~/certs/MyKey.key "~"

Using the server

https://<your instance public IP>:80/