Add quickstart script for Codespaces environment

[goosys]

How about recommending the use of Codespaces to make contributions easier?

With this script, we can launch a clean environment for any branch in just three minutes and discard it when it's no longer needed.

To set up the environment, run the following command:

source bin/setup-codespaces
bin/dev

What do you think?
Let me know if there are any other necessary tasks, such as updating the README.

[nickcharlton]

It's funny that you add this today, as that's what I've been working on for much of this week.

We're trying to see if we can use Codespaces for certain client projects to reduce the onboarding burden, and if it works well enough it makes sense to support it here too.

I'm still deep in the middle of figuring out what the ideal setup might be like, but I'll come back to this soon.

[goosys]

Last year, setting up an environment to run RSpec in Codespaces was quite challenging due to the difficulty of installing a headless browser in the container image at the time, as well as compatibility issues with WebDriver. However, these problems have been resolved in the current container image, and now RSpec runs smoothly with just the execution of the newly added script.

For the past few months, I have been using this script to launch Codespaces and work on PRs, and I have found it to be quite comfortable.

Previously, I had stored the script in a Gist and had to manually copy and paste it each time to set up the environment. I created this PR because I thought it would be more convenient to have it readily available in the repository.

[nickcharlton]

Ooh, that's really good to know, thanks!

I had some comments of previous problems, but no one's been clear enough with me what they actually struggled with.

[goosys]

One small issue remains. Currently, since only Foreman loads Dotenv, any command other than bin/dev requires manually exporting the ENV variable to access the database:

export DATABASE_URL=postgresql://postgres:@localhost

This needs to be set for each terminal session, which is a bit inconvenient, but once we get used to it, it’s not a big deal.

Do you have any ideas?

[nickcharlton]

Oh, interesting. Are you configuring your own dotfiles? One option would be to use something like direnv

[pablobm]

Is setup running twice by accident or on purpose?

[goosys]

It's on purpose. The first execution always stops at this point, so a second execution is necessary.
https://github.com/thoughtbot/administrate/blob/main/bin/setup#L12

[pablobm]

Oh, of course. Thank you. How about a comment to remove the confusion?

[goosys]

Added comments!

[goosys]

Are you configuring your own dotfiles?

No, not really.

The simplest way is to add the export to .bashrc.
Normally, it's not ideal to modify this file, but since this is a temporary environment, keeping it simple might be fine.

echo "" >> ~/.bashrc && echo "export DATABASE_URL=postgresql://postgres:@localhost" >> ~/.bashrc

[nickcharlton]

Ah, interesting.

I've so far gone down the path of figuring out how to setup a .devcontainer (which is also going to need a docker-compose.yml) and that does at least mostly feel like a better approach, but the journey there has been generally ...unpleasant. I should have something to share soon.