What are Providers?
A provider is the CLI program Devsy uses to create, manage, and run workspaces on a given backend. This model is what lets Devsy target any infrastructure — local, cloud, Kubernetes, or remote SSH — without changing how you work.
Each provider is defined by a provider.yaml that declares the options, configuration, binaries, and commands Devsy needs to create workspaces on that backend.
To get started, see Add a provider. To build your own, see How to develop a provider.
Provider Types
Devsy supports two kinds of providers:
Machine providers
Machine providers create and manage a VM for the workspace, then run the container on it. They also handle the VM lifecycle — starting, stopping, and deleting it as needed. The AWS provider is one example, using EC2 instances to run the environment.
Non-machine providers
Non-machine providers run the workspace container directly on the target, with no VM to manage. Docker, Podman, Kubernetes, and SSH are examples.
Manage Providers
You can head over the next sections on how to manage Devsy providers: