IDEs
IDEs in conveyor are user-specific remote development environments, belonging to a conveyor project and deployed in a conveyor environment. They aim to provide a similar development experience as you would have when developing locally. For this they support among other aspects:
- interacting with GIT
- writing code using the web version of visual studio code
- interacting with the Conveyor CLI
- Installing linux tools using the terminal
- issuing docker and docker-compose commands
Why use IDEs over local development?
Choosing between an IDE and a local development setup depends a lot on your workflow, team needs, and project requirements. Too often we saw teams struggle with onboarding, environment drift, and local machine limitations (e.g. no admin rights). We have built IDEs to mitigate these issues and to increase speed, consistency, and accessibility for data teams.
The table below highlights the key trade-offs at a glance.
| Aspect | Cloud IDE | Local Development |
|---|---|---|
| Onboarding | Instant, pre-configured environments; no setup hassle | Manual setup, tooling and dependencies must be installed locally |
| Consistency | Same environment for all developers; no “works on my machine” issues | Prone to drift (different OS, versions, configs) |
| Performance | Scales with cloud compute; lightweight local device is fine | Dependent on local machine specs (CPU, RAM, disk) |
| Accessibility | Available from any device with a browser | Tied to one machine unless you sync manually |
| Security | Source code and data stays in the cloud; centralized access control | Code/data stored locally; risk if device is lost or compromised |
| Connectivity | Needs stable internet but throughput of the IDE is often higher than locally | Works offline as long as you have all code/dependencies locally |
| Customization | Limited shortcuts, plugin ecosystem, and system-level tweaks | Full control over shortcuts, extensions, and local tools |
| Best Fit | Standardized teams, remote/distributed work, quick onboarding | Heavy custom workflows, offline dev, power users with local optimizations |
When does an IDE Shine
- Onboarding new developers: Environments are ready in minutes, no local setup required.
- Team consistency: Everyone uses the same toolchain and dependencies, reducing “works on my machine” problems.
- Security-conscious environments: Code and data never leave the cloud, reducing data leakage risk. Additionally, no tooling needs to be installed on your local laptop, reducing the need for giving admin permissions.
- Scaling needs: Compute can be scaled up without requiring expensive local hardware.
- High-speed internet connection: Our IDEs have a fast connection to cloud resources, often outperforming local setups.
When Local Development Wins
- Highly customized workflows: Easier to tailor IDEs, shortcuts, plugins, and local tooling.
- Offline work: No internet required once you have everything installed locally.
Philosophy of working with IDEs
For Conveyor IDEs are a temporary working environment, which are created with a specific goal in mind like:
- Developing a new feature
- Debugging a specific issue
- ...
To accomplish this goal you create or checkout an already existing codebase and start working. After your work is finished, you push your changes such that you can delete the IDE. This way you can always start from a clean working environment for the next feature and you don't have to worry about cleaning up your environment.
All your work should be saved in Git and you can configure your IDE to run specific commands when starting up such that you should not reuse the same IDE over and over again. Rather, we advise to create a new IDE for each new task you start on.
With this philosophy in mind, we also delete suspended IDEs after 14 days. Apart from the philosophy that was already mentioned, this also helps with:
- making sure you have the latest software, patches, and functionality available as provided by Conveyor
- keeping the costs low