Codespaces Network Bridge

🧪 The extension is currently in Preview stage, so some hiccups are expected. Please help us to improve by submitting feedback!

This GitHub CLI extension allows to bridge network between a Codespace and your local machine, so the Codespace can reach out to any remote resource that is reachable from your machine. In another words, it uses your local machine as a network gateway to get to those resources.

For instance, if you are using a VPN to connect to your enterprise network to access a database or any other remote resources on the private network, this extension allows you to get to those resources from within a Codespace, so that you can develop fully inside a Codespace!

About GitHub CLI.

Prerequisites

1. This extension depends on the latest features of GitHub CLI(>= v2.8.0), please make sure to upgrade it. If run the gh codespace select command opens the codespace selection dialog, you are good to go.

2. The extension relies on gh codespace ssh command to establish SSH tunnel to a Codespace, hence you need to setup ssh keys if you didn't before. If you can do sudo gh codespace ssh (sudo is important since kernel might use different identity under non-root user) and connect to a Codespace successfully, - you are good to go. Refer to Generating a new SSH key and adding it to the ssh-agent for more info.

3. If your Codespaces use non-default image, make sure that GitHub CLI and SSH server are installed inside the Codespaces. It might be as simple as adding "github-cli": "latest" and "sshd": "latest" to the "feartures" section of the devcontainer.json file!

Installation

Mac OSx:

gh extension install github/gh-net

Linux:

sudo gh extension install github/gh-net

The sudo is required during extension installation on Linux due to https://github.com/cli/cli/issues/5456. Hopefully it won't be the case in the future.

Usage

To start network forwarding from a Codespace to a local machine, run:

sudo gh net start

Note: sudo privileges are required to bind to network sockets on your machine.

This will provide codespace selection dialog:

Select a codespace and press enter. The extension will connect to selected codespace and start forwarding network traffic:

There are two pannels in the connected view of the extension:

• Panel on the left (NAT) shows the network address translation table for currently opened connections. For stateful protocols(e.g. TCP) the records are cleaned up automatically after connection is closed so the records will come and go as connection is established and closed. For stateless protocols (e.g. UDP or ICMP) or unsuccessful TCP connections the records are cleaned up after some time, so those will show up in the list for some time.
• Panel on the right (DNS) shows the resolved DNS records, as hostname, record and time-to-live (TTL) values.

Press q or ctrl + c to stop the extension.

CLI Options

• --gui: Enanble/disable GUI mode. [true | false] [default: true]
• --dns: Enanble/disable DNS resolution. [true | false] [default: true]
• --trace: Specify tracing verbosity. [none | trace | debug | info | warn | error] [default: info]

Run gh net start -h for details.

Supported platforms

Mac OSx

Architecture	Local	Inside a Codespace
Intel	✅	🙅
Apple	🏃	🙅

Linux

Distro	Local	Inside Codespace
Ubuntu	✅	✅
Debian	✅	✅
Fedora	?	?
Red Hat	?	?
Mint	?	?
OpenSUSE	?	?
Centos	?	?
Kali	?	?
Raspberry Pi OS	?	?
Alpine (bullseye)	?	✅

Windows

Version	Local	Inside a Codespace
Windows 10	🏃	🙅
Windows 11	🏃	🙅

Legend: ✅ - currently supported 🏃 - in progress 🙅 - not applicable ? - unknown / not tested

For list of supported network protocols refer to this doc.

Troubleshooting

• Something is missing? Please create a ✨ feature request.
• Something is incorrect? Please create a 🐛 bug report.
• For list of known issues refer to 👉 this doc.

Useful links

• How it works
• About GitHub CLI
• About GitHub Codespaces
• 🔒 Source code