Use CI Steps to define developer environment configuration for Workspaces

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MR: Pending

Description

As part of Workspaces on CI Runners BETA (&16650) , we will be converting a devfile into a CI job YAML. We will essentially be converting the devfile into a list of CI Steps and creating a job from those steps.

The issue is about providing users the ability to directly define CI steps for defining their developer environments instead of providing a devfile.

The reasons for this are as follows

• CI Steps are composable units of execution.
• CI Steps can be run locally in a docker container - CI Steps Phase: Users can run steps in their ow... (&15073 - closed)
• CI Steps provides a registry to publish various CI steps. Users can bring in their own registries or CI Steps.
• CI Steps provides a concept of versioning in-built.
• CI Steps are already used in CI. As we are using CI Runners, using the same constructs/definitions would bring a unifying approach as a platform.
• CI Steps are also being proposed for Duo Workflows.
• CI Steps are a definition by GitLab which are highly composable. Relying on a foreign definition(devfiles/devcontainers) can be restrictive/challenging in terms of what we want to do vs what the specification wants you to do.

Acceptance criteria

• Run an investigation to determine the feasibility and benefits of this.
• Understand if we need to build on top of CI/CD Components or CI Steps

Implementation plan

N.A.

This is a discussion/spike issue.