Back in November 2019, Microsoft announced Visual Studio Online. In May, this was renamed to Visual Studio Codespaces. Visual Studio Codespaces allows fully-managed on-demand development environments in Azure. They are still available and other than a blog post last Friday, you may not be aware they are going away. The current offering will be officially retired in February 2021. What its being replaced with is GitHub Codespaces.

So, what’s the problem?

It’s quite simple. As of now, very few have had the opportunity to try out the new GitHub Codespaces. GitHub Codespaces is still in a limited public beta and while Microsoft and GitHub are working hard to move everyone over as quickly as possible, it will take some time. As of November 20th, 2020, you will no longer be able to create new Visual Studio Codespaces. As of February 17, 2021, any remaining Visual Studio Codespaces will be deleted.

For complete details on the consolidation to GitHub Codespaces, check out the docs page at jasong.us/3jZ9JnA.

In my case, I’ve been on the waiting list for GitHub Codespaces for some time. Apparently I’m still waiting:

GitHub Codespaces Waitlist