I’m editing this post with on my iPad with gitpod.io, and I’m very impressed. And I’m not easily impressed.

I first heard about gitpod.io when saw their post about how Gitpod is now Open Source 🎉. When I started looking for solutions to manage the blog on my iPad, I thought I’d give it a try.

The environment is so familiar. It is pretty much Visual Studio in the browser, with some linux based environment accessible through the integrated terminal.

Almost everything that I’ve tried so far has worked (note that I’m not trying to break it… just use it):

  • command + shift + p to toggle word wrap,
  • Install prettier extension to automatically format posts as I save them,
  • Executing and running the Jekyll server (bundle exec jekyll serve --watch),
  • Previewing the site on Gitpod,
  • Creating a new post with a custom script (scripts/new-post.sh tools "Maintaining a Jekyll Blog with Gitpod"),
  • Syntax highlighting,
  • Commit files locally, and
  • Push files to GitHub.

Things that don’t work:

  • Upload an image (e.g. screenshot) via Gitpod (haven’t figured out how to do this yet),
  • Terminating a command in the terminal with ctrl + c (at lease on the iPad with the Smart Keyboard),

I haven’t spent very long with Gitpod, but I’m happy with the experience so far. It isn’t going to replace my laptop environment, but I think its a viable alternative for when I’m on the iPad (with the Apple Smart Keyboard).

I’ll keep this post updated as I learn more.