Create a Workspace

A workspace may have automatically been created for you when you opened VB Studio from a page. If not, or if you have other requirements, you can create a workspace explicitly.

You can create workspaces in projects where you’ve been added as a team member. A workspace requires an environment against which you develop your application and deploy it to. A project could have one or more environments available for different purposes, with workspaces mapped to each of these environments:

• An app extension project will often have one development environment that one or more users will use to extend/configure the Oracle Cloud Application app. There will, however, be additional environments that users will publish/deploy their changes to and, of course, the production environment. Many projects with extensions have three environments - the first one is the development environment, the second is an intermediary one that’s used for additional testing, and the third one is the production environment.

• A visual app project will also often have one VB development environment in which visual apps are developed. However, there some cases that may have two development environments, for example one that is running a new VB release while the other is running a previous VB release. Both of these will be two separate environments in the visual app project.

The environment(s) must support the type of project you are working on. To create a workspace for a visual application, your project must be associated with a Visual Builder instance. To create a workspace for an extension, your project must be associated with an Oracle Cloud Application instance.

If the development environment isn’t defined, you won’t be able to create a workspace. You’ll need to ask the project owner or an administrator to create one for you before you try to create a workspace.

Note: Typically, the Visual Builder instance added to your visual application’s environment uses the same identity domain as your Visual Builder Studio instance. If you choose a Visual Builder instance from a different identity domain as your deployment environment, you’ll see a warning about setting up the Allowed Origins configuration. If you see this, you’ll need to talk to your administrator to make sure your instance’s domain is added to its list of allowed origins, as described in Allow Other Domains Access to Services.

Depending on what you need in your workspace, the type of template you select and the information you’re asked to supply during creation varies considerably. Here are the options for creating a workspace:

• Clone an existing Git repository that contains an extension or visual application

  Most people will create a workspace using the Clone from Git option, once a repository with the visual application or extension that the team works on has been created. One team member will create the Git repository, so you and each member of your team will use the clone option to create at least one workspace so they can do their work. Or, perhaps you want to continue working on a branch that someone else has started. If you work on multiple branches and want to move freely from branch to branch without having to make sure that you added/committed changes you made in a branch, then you’d likely use the clone option to create a new workspace on the same repository.

  See Create a Workspace Using an Existing Repository if you’re creating a visual application or Clone an Existing Repository if you’re using this workspace for an extension.

• Create a new visual application

  See Create Workspace for a New Visual Application for instructions on how to use this option.

• Create a new extension

  See Create an Extension for instructions on how to use this option.

• Import an exported archive that contains an extension or a visual application

  You’d use this option when you want to base your new visual application on a valid existing artifact that you’ve already exported from Visual Builder or Visual Builder Studio to your local system. Or, if a team member gives you an archive of an extension, you can import it to create a workspace containing all the files in their branch of the extension’s Git repository. When you create a workspace by importing an archive, you create a new Git repository and branch. By using the import and export functionality, you can share application sources and move applications between instances.

  When you select an archive to import, or drag it to the upload area in the dialog, VB Studio checks to see if the archive is valid for the operation (contains a visual application or an extension).

  See Import an App Extension Archive if you’re creating an extension or Create a Workspace by Importing a Visual Application if you’re using this workspace for a visual application.