JetBrains & VS Code are using all the free storage quota

[huw]

I started getting storage notifications a few months ago, when I previously hadn’t. I know I don’t have a huge repository, so I decided to use ncdu to check it out. I found that:

• /workspaces/.codespaces/shared/editors/jetbrains is using 11.2 GB to store a number of JetBrains editors
• /.codespaces and /vscode use 5.2 GB each. I’m not sure VS Code actually takes that much to store, but at the very least nothing is running from /.codespaces/bin/cache, whereas the VS Code process definitely runs from /vscode.

Deleting these doesn’t break anything for me, because I use VS Code for Web exclusively. However, these are re-added every time the Codespace launches. I wasn’t able to fix it by using a postStartCommand either, but I didn’t try very hard because I don’t think it’ll actually remove them from the billable usage.

Now, I don’t know if these files are actually counted toward the storage quota (I hope they aren’t, but I can’t think of anything else, and their size lines up with the quota I’m consuming each month). I would hope, to be honest, that keeping a single Codespace in storage doesn’t automatically consume the free quota; this seems against the spirit of having a free quota in the first place. Can someone from GitHub explain what’s going on?

[cwndrws]

Hi 👋 thanks for writing in. The intention of our storage billing is that you are only billed for the storage that you use, which in the case of using the default devcontainer, is just things you've added to the image (your repo, any system configuration and any tools you've manually installed). I don't believe the directories you mention, /workspaces/.codespaces/shared/, /.codespaces/ or /vscode/ are counted toward your storage usage. From our docs about how we bill storage:

This includes any files you use in a codespace, such as cloned repositories, configuration files, data loaded to the codespace (for example as input or output of the software running in the repository), and extensions, among others.

and

If you use the default image, the storage usage for your codespace will be based on the files in your repository, and any files you subsequently add to the codespace. If you use an alternative base image, then the resulting container and all of the files in the codespace will be counted as used storage.

If you're looking into how to understand what is getting counted toward the storage you're being billed for, how big is the repo that you're using in codespaces? Also are you using prebuilds? We have had some users not realize that you get billed for prebuild storage in addition to the storage used by your running codespaces.

[huw]

@AG-DavidG That won’t work, it rebuilds very regularly (possibly on boot?)

The only reliable way to solve this is to start with the universal base image and modify as necessary.

[ryanwinter]

Just ran into this issue, so are you saying to remove the ~/.codespaces/shared/editors/jetbrains in the Dockerfile with the rest of the setup?

[huw]

@ryanwinter No, the only solution is to source your Dockerfile from mcr.microsoft.com/devcontainers/universal, and then run whatever commands you need to run to get it to your ideal setup. This is the only image which doesn't count ~/.codespaces toward the storage quota (I was unable to reliably delete the offending editors from other images in a way that didn't count toward my storage quota). If you don't want to use Debian 13, then you just have to accept the extra cost.

[ryanwinter]

Oh nice, this is the one I'm already using and yeah I confirmed that directory is mounted from elsewhere so not included.

I still wish they had more granularity in they hardware options, or just bump the disk space up a little bit for all of them.

[Samigirma1]

I'm running into the same issue. My problem is less with billing and more about actually available capacity. My workflow requires building containers within the dev container. Container builds are consistently failing because I'm running out of disk space.