Network Bridging

With Tailscale you can automatically and securely connect your Gitpod workspace to other development resources, whether in the cloud or on prem, such as a production database behind your company’s firewall. You can also spin up several Gitpod workspaces that can talk to each other.

Tailscale is built on top of the point-to-point open-source WireGuard protocol which powers an encrypted mesh network or tailnet. At Gitpod we are big fans of their product and recently announced an official partnership with them.

Integration

If you’re already using Tailscale, the following steps need to be done (see https://github.com/gitpod-io/template-tailscale for a working example):

1. Install tailscale through a custom .gitpod.Dockerfile by adding the following layer to it.

USER root

RUN curl -fsSL https://pkgs.tailscale.com/stable/ubuntu/focal.gpg | sudo apt-key add - \
     && curl -fsSL https://pkgs.tailscale.com/stable/ubuntu/focal.list | sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/tailscale.list \
     && apt-get update \
     && apt-get install -y tailscale

2. Start tailscale on workspace start and maintain the machine state across workspaces by adding the following tasks to your .gitpod.yml.

tasks:
  - name: tailscaled
    command: |
      if [ -n "${TAILSCALE_STATE_MYPROJECT}" ]; then
        # restore the tailscale state from gitpod user's env vars
        sudo mkdir -p /var/lib/tailscale
        echo "${TAILSCALE_STATE_MYPROJECT}" | sudo tee /var/lib/tailscale/tailscaled.state > /dev/null
      fi
      sudo tailscaled
  - name: tailscale
    command: |
      if [ -n "${TAILSCALE_STATE_MYPROJECT}" ]; then
        sudo -E tailscale up
      else
        sudo -E tailscale up --hostname "gitpod-${GITPOD_GIT_USER_NAME// /-}-$(echo ${GITPOD_WORKSPACE_CONTEXT} | jq -r .repository.name)"
        # store the tailscale state into gitpod user
        gp env TAILSCALE_STATE_MYPROJECT="$(sudo cat /var/lib/tailscale/tailscaled.state)"
      fi

This configuration will register a Tailscale node based on the following name scheme: gitpod-{user-name}-{repo-name}. On first workspace start you will get asked to login through the terminal. When this was successful a Tailscale machine state will be stored in your Gitpod’s account. On subsequent starts of workspaces on this project this machine state will be restored.

IF you enable Tailscale’s Magic DNS you get a stable domain for your project’s services that you can reach from any other Tailscale node (e.g. another workspace or your local machine).

Warning: Be aware that starting and connecting multiple workspaces for the same project in parallel results in unreliable network connections.