Change the location of the user data folder (~/.local/share/code-server)

[aghasemi]

Hi,

Is it possible to modify where user data are stored. The configuration of my Kubernetes volumes have some troubles with writeability etc.. in that folder.

And if so, is it also possible in a Docker image derived from the official codercom/code-server?

[code-asher]

Is it possible to modify where user data are stored.

Yes, you can with --user-data-dir. Example:

code-server --user-data-dir /tmp/my-data

is it also possible in a Docker image derived from the official codercom/code-server?

I think it will depend on the image. With the official image you can just do:

docker run codercom/code-server --user-data-dir /tmp/my-data

So that might work for unofficial images derived from ours as well.

[aghasemi]

Thanks a lot. That worked. However, somehow it seems the heartbeat file (/home/coder/.local/share/code-server/heartbeat) is still read from the default location.

[code-asher]

Oh! Let me check...ah yeah you are right, that one is using the XDG directory for data.

I cannot recall if that was on purpose, but changing the default now might be a breaking change. 🤔

One idea is to configure XDG_DATA_HOME which should do the trick.

[code-asher]

I opened #6834