coder-workspace-template-deploy

name	coder-workspace-template-deploy
description	Push an updated Coder workspace Terraform template and redeploy running workspaces onto it. Use when workspace-template/main.tf changes (resources, volumes, etc.) need to reach live Coder workspaces.
user-invocable	false
origin	auto-extracted

Coder Workspace Template Deploy

Extracted: 2026-07-07 Context: Editing cluster/apps/ai/coder/workspace-template/main.tf and needing the change (e.g. resource requests/limits) to actually reach the running workspaces.

Problem

Committing a change to workspace-template/main.tf has zero effect on already-running Coder workspaces. The template must be pushed to the Coder server as a new version, and each workspace must be individually rebuilt onto that version.

Solution

1. Check CLI/server version match. coder whoami prints a "version mismatch" warning (with the exact required version) if the local coder CLI is behind the server — commands still run, but reinstall to match and avoid edge-case failures:

   ARCH=$(dpkg --print-architecture)
   curl -sL "https://github.com/coder/coder/releases/download/<VERSION>/coder_<version-no-v>_linux_${ARCH}.tar.gz" \
     | tar -xzO ./coder | sudo tee /usr/bin/coder > /dev/null
   sudo chmod +x /usr/bin/coder
   

   Note the extracted path is ./coder, not coder — the tarball stores it with a leading ./.

2. Push the new template version:

   cd cluster/apps/ai/coder/workspace-template
   coder templates push sandbox --directory . -y
   

   The live template is named sandbox (the original design doc called it sandbox-workspace — that name was never actually used).

3. Redeploy each running workspace with coder update <owner>/<workspace> — not coder restart, which keeps the workspace on its old template version. update has no -y/--yes flag (unlike create), but it does not prompt interactively as long as no parameter values changed, so it completes non-interactively in that case.

4. Run updates one at a time, not looped with combined output capture. Each update does a full stop → plan → apply → start cycle (roughly 30–90s). Piping several sequential coder update calls into one shell command easily exceeds a 2-minute tool timeout across multiple workspaces — invoke each as its own command instead.

5. Verify:

   coder list
   

   Confirm STATUS is Started, HEALTHY is true, and OUTDATED is false for every workspace.

When to Use

After merging any change to cluster/apps/ai/coder/workspace-template/main.tf that should apply to already-running workspaces.