.gitpod.yml
.
Understanding tasks - command
The simplest first task to automate is the installation of packages. We do that by adding them as acommand
in a task definition. Add a .gitpod.yml
at the root of your repository, add the following code, commit and re-open the workspace.
.gitpod.yml
Understanding tasks - multiple commands
Now let’s take that example, and add some more steps to install our packages, and start both our frontend and backend applications. Go ahead and update your.gitpod.yml
stop your workspace and then start a new one.
.gitpod.yml
gp tasks
in a workspace. You’ll notice that we also use openMode
in each task to specify how these terminals open in the workspace.
Here’s how it should look:

split terminal example
Optimizing your .gitpod.yml
The above.gitpod.yml
will run all of your tasks in the “foreground”, e.g. once the workspace has started. This is a great way to get started, however you might want to optimize your workspaces to open faster, which you can do by using Prebuilds.
To use Prebuilds you need to:
- Modify your
.gitpod.yml
to specify which steps can be ran in advance. - Enable Prebuilds in your Repository Settings.
.gitpod.yml
however, we’re going to run our npm install
command in a prebuild.
.gitpod.yml