AWS/GCP Provider - Allow option to retain Machines even if workspace is deleted

[famagusta]

Sometimes while configuring the workspaces, we need to recreate the workspace multiple times. Every time the machine has to be recreated, docker images need to be pulled. This wastes a lot of time. It would be useful if we can instruct the Devpod GUI to retain the same machine with the docker caches and all the libraries installed.

Another use case I can think is to retain the code changes in case the workspace needs to be deleted for some reason.

Currently, I create a dummy workspace with the quickstart examples to forcibly keep the machine around.

[bkneis]

Thanks for reporting your issue @famagusta, unfortunately I don't seem to be able to replicate your issue. Using DevPod GUI with gcloud provider when I click "rebuild" on a workspace, I can see in the logs that the machine was not recreated.

Can you provide a problematic workflow and the logs to show the machine being created?

[famagusta]

So the issue comes when I force delete a workspace not rebuilding the workspace. I am looking for a feature to keep the machine around for some time while I am experimenting with different workspace devcontainer/docker-compose configurations

[bkneis]

@famagusta I see I understand your use case now. Unfortunately the GUI does not allow you to specify which machine to deploy your workspace to. We are updating the GUI at the moment so this is something likely to be added to v2 :) For now, if you use the CLI you are able to specify the machine via the arg --machine. What I would recommend for your use case, is to use the CLI to start a small workspace like alpine, then start your other workspaces that you need to delete and recreate and specify the machine ID using --machine. I hope that helps!